How to arrange Your Home Cinema Seats

After you’ve decided on the perfect home cinema seats, you will want to arrange them in a way that you get the maximum home theatre experience from each of the seats. While planning the layout of your media room is partly a question of individual preference – just like choosing your seat in the cinema – there are also some basic guidelines to help you optimize the visual and audio experience and get the most out of your own home theatre.

1. Consider the screen width and reolution  for the best viewing distance

If you’ve ever had to watch a film constantly tilting your head or slouching down to get an unobstructed view of the screen, you will agree that an awkward seating pattern can ruin the movie experience completely. In order to maximize the visual experience the furniture needs to be placed at a comfortable distance from the big screen display.

The optimum viewing distance – as it is called – is determined by the screen’s dimensions and resolution. In the case of high definition TVs the available viewing distance has been calculated between 1.5-2 times, but not more than 3 times the screen width, whereas with standard definition TVs it should be more than 3 times, but max 5 times the screen width.

2. Centre-most seating position for an optimum viewing

Once you’ve defined the desirable distance from the screen you will face the next challenge – planning the seating pattern itself, which, if designed carefully, will add a lot to the viewing experience.

The arrangement of the seats will be quite obvious when you have a single row, but with multiple rows it might be a bit tricky to find the best seating arrangement. In this case you may want to consider a curved configuration instead of the standard straight line, so that each seat will face the screen directly, providing the best viewing angle.
 
3. Screen visibility - Seat height and tilting

Now that you have positioned the seats in your home theatre room, it may be useful to check whether the entire screen is visible from all of the seats and height of the screen is comfortable.

This isn’t really an issue when you have a single row seating configuration, but it becomes more relevant when you have multiple rows of seats. It’s been observed that most comfortable viewing experience results when the eyes of the viewer are level with the centre of the screen.
In the case of multiple rows you may even want to consider using risers/platforms to ensure that the viewer’s field of view is unobstructed and the whole screen is visible from their seat.