"don't discount hanging them on the wall. They may Actually sound better!" (Rockadanny)
Unfortunaty, the wall is where all the bass modes come together in an acoustic space, thus reinforcing the bass modes in a room, for that peaky, boomy, one-note kind of sound is inevitable. Basically, this means the farthest removed sound from original intent of the speaker manufacture most often! Not good.
However, some speaker are balanced a bit better than other to be wall mounted, and they do stuff to the crossover to help. Still, it's never ideal usually. That's what I find.
If you think not, just measure speakers bass response and see what happens!!! You'll usually easily get 15-20+db increase in certain bass frequencies in the room. This is distortion from the original signal, partially negating all that effort your trying to invest in for good sound.
That all said, yes, little speakers that roll off quite high, crossed over to a small well place sub is often a better option. You can then place the subwoofer for maximum benefit, and the satalites too. Yes, compromises here, but cosmetic benefits and the "pro's" vs. con's is better this way I think.
Otherwise, a bit larger wall mounted speakers without a sub will need to likely be EQ'd in the room for good sound!
Trade-off's are inevitable if you're trying to wow the socks of your hair clients unfortunately. There's no free ride.
I think relaxing your expectations, getting some nice sounding speakers, and placing em as best as you can (preferably something with wide dispersion) is the practical ticket. Alot of what's mentioned would be fine. Do some research.
Still, you'll have more flexibility if you invest into lookiing into some of this new EQ stuff on the market now. MultEQ from Audyssey is here now. There's others.
good luck
