For the rest of us, the size of the room available will have a profound effect on the choices we make. Although there is no definite point where a small room becomes a large room, 15 feet seems a reasonable dividing line. At these dimensions and larger, projection screens become more tenable, you can add more movie theater seats and you can place surround sound speakers further away from viewers. In short, the room starts to feel more like a home cinema than a large media room.

If you do have any flexibility with the shape of your home cinema, avoid a square room wherever possible. Due to the way sound travels, square rooms can generate standing waves leading to excessive amplification in some areas.

The third best shape is a trapagon. This follows no specific ratio but it is best if the front wall is at least a foot wider and higher than the rear one. The fourth best layout would be a standard cuboid (except a square of course).

To begin with, make some rough sketches of what a perfect home theater layout looks like to you.

As you work your way through the later sections, you will be able to refine your plans with some actual measurements. This might mean giving up some of your optional extras or, if you have a lot of space, you might find you can include more features than you expected.

While this guide focuses mainly on room layout, you will need to decide on everything from soundproofing and flooring materials to wiring requirements and cinema lighting before starting work (or hiring a home theater specialist).

Which should you place in your design first? Your TV or projector screen or your theater seats? In fact, to get the ideal home movie experience, you will need to treat these vital decisions as two sides of the same coin.

The relationship between vision and distance is fixed by math so your role as a designer is limited to balancing these aspects so that everyone gets maximum enjoyment from a movie no matter where they are seated. The first distance you can anchor is the position of your first row of seats in relation to the screen. This should be directly related to the size of that screen.

It is better to use the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) or THX guides to viewing distance as this is based on viewing angle. Remember when grandma used to say if you sit too close to the TV you will strain your eyes? She clearly understood that if your eyes are forced to take in too wide an angle then this can lead to eye strain and headaches. This is because we have to subtly move our eyes to take in any action that is in our peripheral field of view.

The SMPTE suggests a viewing angle of 30 degrees as a reference while THX recommends a 40 degree angle as a maximum (36 degrees for Cinemascope format). Viewing angles of up to around 60 degrees are acceptable before eye strain becomes a concern.

On the other hand, too narrow a viewing angle reduces the benefit of the high resolution technology while reducing immersion (more of your field of vision is taken up by the wall around the screen).

Rather than do the math yourself, you can simply enter your screen width and viewing format into this calculator: https://myhometheater.homestead.com/viewingdistancecalculator.html

If you are installing a projection screen, you must work out where your projector will need to go. This is where the projector’s throw distance is important as this will constrain your design options.

With older resolutions such as 720p, sitting too close to a projection screen or TV would lead to pixelation. This isn’t really an issue with modern resolutions such as 1080p, 4K and 8K. By the time you get close enough to see individual pixels your viewing angle will be uncomfortable anyway so there is no need to overly complicate things by worrying about screen resolution.

Placing your home theater speakers is a more complicated task. Not only is balancing the sound in a room notoriously difficult, people also have individual preferences.

One of the biggest issues with acoustics in home theaters is sound bouncing off hard surfaces creating a distorted sound. This can be controlled by the careful placement of acoustic panels and bass traps but does require either trial and error or expert help. In a traditional surround sound set-up, loudspeaker output can be controlled via your AVR’s ‘room control’ function or similar. The latest amplifier models will give you full parametric control over audio output.

Have you ever scratched your head when looking at home theater seating diagrams and wondered how the calculations were done? This explanation should clear up any doubts you have about your ability to do math.

There are two different ways you can measure the width of home theater seating.

Measuring the depth of movie theater seats is much simpler than calculating width. The depth will either be fixed or, for a recliner, there will be a value for the unextended and fully extended chair. When calculating your spaces between rows, you will want to use the fully extended depth of any recliners in your home cinema layout.

Of course, it is highly likely that you will start designing your home theater room layout before deciding which seats you will be buying. In this case, it is very useful to be able to estimate the size of a home theater seat.

There can be quite a large variation in dimensions between chairs

From the information so far, you should have an idea of the size of your TV or projector screen and the distance from the screen of your first row of seats. From here, you need to plan out how many seats will be in your first row and the placement of any subsequent rows not forgetting to leave space for walkways.

It is at this stage that you might want to experiment with different seating layouts. If you have a large space and screen and intend to regularly entertain a host of friends and family, multiple rows makes sense. However, if space is restricted and you are mainly going to be enjoying movies with close family, a smaller screen with just one row of seats may suffice.

For this example, imagine you have a 12 foot wide home movie theater and are looking to work out how many theater seats you can fit in the space. You are torn between the Octane Flash HR (35 inch wide) and Octane Mega HR (39 inch wide) theater seats.

Despite its wider frame, the Octane Mega HR will also just about fit in the space with three chairs measuring a total of 103 inches. However, a curved row of three would only work if you converted one pair of chairs into a loveseat.

For smaller rooms of 10 foot square and below, a media room is likely to be a better option than a home theater. While you might not get the full home cinema experience, you will have more flexibility with layout and equipment choice.

Due to the smaller space, you are better off reducing capacity and choosing a smaller number of higher quality theater seats (e.g. opting for luxurious Italian top grain leather upholstery over bonded leather). To maximize use of space, consider replacing single chairs with loveseats or sofas.

Lighting is a vital consideration for a media room. When watching a movie, the more completely you can block out ambient light, the more enjoyable your experience will be. Adjustable lighting is preferable, particularly if you will be using your media room for a wide range of activities.