It is critically important to position the seating area in proportion to the viewing screen size in order to create a perfect home theater experience. No one should be so far away from the screen they feel they have to squint to see the screen and also no one should have to sit so close that they have to keep moving their heads to see the entire screen. Think of how uncomfortable it is if you go to the movies and get stuck in the front row. Bigger is not necessarily better. Typically, the larger the home theater screen, the farther back the seating should be. If the space in your home theater is limited, a smaller screen size will actually be better than a larger screen.

Determine the Optimal Viewing Distance

Here’s how to figure out the closest optimal viewing distance you should design for your home theater design plan. Simply multiply the diagonal screen size by 1.6. The figure you come up with will be the closest optimum viewing distance for that particular sized screen. Here’s a chart with a few sizes and optimum distances:

Next, calculate the farthest optimal viewing distance. This time, multiply the diagonal screen size by 3.

You may find other formulae for calculating these distances, but I’ve found these to work pretty well as guidelines for good viewing.

When creating home theater design plans, you must determine what size screen is right for your home theater room and where the seating will go. If you are building your house or carving your home theater out of an unfinished basement, you have the luxury of choosing the screen size you want, or the number of seats you want, and then creating a room with the optimal size for viewing it. Whether your room already exists or not, you will need to consider the width of the room to properly accommodate your home theater seating. Home theater seats are fairly wide. And even a typical sectional or living room suite of furniture can be wide. You will not want the audience to have to view the screen from too sharp an angle. This is another reason to not place the seating too close to the screen.

Determine the Optimal Viewing Angle

There are two industry standards for the optimal screen viewing angle. THX is a high-fidelity audio/visual standard for movie theaters that was developed at George Lucas’ company. THX recommends a maximum viewing angle of 40 degrees. This means that theater seating should be arranged within a 40 degree wedge of space, i.e. 20 degrees to either side of the screen centerline, for best viewing.

SMPTE, the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers, recommends a somewhat tighter maximum viewing angle of 30 degrees. All the seating in your home theater design plan should be within that optimal viewing angle area. Here’s a drawing that illustrates this.

The Rest of the Room

The next step in creating home theater design plans is to figure out where everything goes. Which wall will hold the screen? Where will you enter the room? If you are building your home theater into an existing room, you may have no choice in these matters. But if you have a choice, it is usually best to enter the room from behind the seating to give the best theater-like impression and to let viewers enter and exit the room without disturbing other viewers. But entering the home theater room from the side might be most convenient if you plan to have risers, or tiers, to raise the seating on the second and third rows. That way the door to the room can be at the same level as the floor outside the home theater room. Whichever way you choose to place the door, just be sure to leave plenty of room for the popcorn cart.

Working out home theater design plans is just the beginning of a good home theater design. The rest of the theater ambience comes from the right interior design. Choosing the right lighting and finishes will cap off a great home theater design. Be sure to read our Home Theater Tips for a quick summary of the key points.

I hope this information is helpful to you. You might want to get yourself a copy of my best-seller, Designing Your Perfect House. It is chockfull of valuable tips and advice that will save you many times the cost of the book on your house building or remodeling project. You might also like The Well-Centered Home: Simple Steps to Increase Mindfulness, Self-Awareness, and Happiness Where You Live. It will show you how to make your home a happy place.

The post Advice for Creating Home Theater Design Plans appeared first on Designing Your Perfect House.

Things You Should Do:

• Do match the home theater screen size with the room size. A screen that is too large can be just as uncomfortable to watch as one that is too small. There are optimum distances from the screen where you should sit. Too close can be worse than too far away.
• Do place the screen at a height with the center of the screen at, or slightly above, the eye level of the viewers for comfort and good ergonomics.
• Do arrange the seating so that every viewer has a comfortable, unobstructed view of the screen. Raised platforms for rear seats help with this.
• Do add dimmers to the home theater room lights to allow careful control of lighting levels and “scene setting.”
• Do choose “soft” surfaces for the floor and possibly the walls that don’t reflect too much sound to improve the home theater acoustics within the room.
• Do think through your automation system to make operating your home theater as easy and convenient as possible.
• Do install as high quality an audio system as your budget will allow. High quality sound is half of the audio-video experience in any home theater.
• Do install sound insulation in the walls and ceiling to block outside noise from entering the room and keep theater sounds from disturbing others in the house. consider installing sound-deadening drywall, as well. Sound seal the doors.
• Do manage the heating and air conditioning system to prevent noise when the system turns on and off. Make sure the room will maintain a comfortable temperature. Eliminate the sounds of moving air.
• Do sound insulate any plumbing pipes near the home theater to prevent the sound of rushing water, that can ruin a good desert scene.

Things You Should Not Do:

• Don’t place the seating too close to the screen. The closest seats should be no closer than 1.6 times the diagonal size of the screen. For example, if you are using a 60 inch screen, the closest seat should be no closer than 96” (eight feet) from the screen.
• Don’t install the screen too high. This may be the most important home theater tip of them all. Placing the screen too high will be uncomfortable for the viewers’ eyes and necks.
• Don’t install a hardwood or tile floor in your home theater. Hard floors reflect sound and will make your home theater reverberate too much. It will make your good audio system sound like a bad audio system.
• Don’t forget to install good black-out window coverings with enclosed edges that can block outside light. Stray light will compromise your video clarity and screen brightness.
• Don’t paint the walls a light color. Light colors will increase the overall ambient light levels in the room and that is not good. consider lightly padded fabric wall coverings instead. They can help the room acoustics while also controlling light reflection.
• Don’t forget to install good sound insulation in the walls and ceiling to keep movie sounds in and outside sounds out.

Hopefully, these home theater tips will help you create a terrific room your whole family will enjoy. But don’t stop here. Please take a look at our other Home Theater Design pages that discuss home theater design in greater detail.

I hope this information is helpful to you. You might want to get yourself a copy of my best-seller, Designing Your Perfect House. It is chockfull of valuable tips and advice that will save you many times the cost of the book on your house building or remodeling project. You might also like The Well-Centered Home: Simple Steps to Increase Mindfulness, Self-Awareness, and Happiness Where You Live. It will show you how to make your home a happy place.

The post Home Theatre Tips appeared first on Designing Your Perfect House.

A home theater can be the perfect addition to a home. It will add value to your home and is often a home design feature and amenity buyers are looking for. Simply put, a good home theater can help a house sell faster and for a better price.

As you begin your home theater design, you must first determine how you plan to use your home theater or media room design. That decision will influence many aspects of the design. Will it be used exclusively for watching movies? If that’s the case, do you want to capture the feel of a commercial movie theater, but on a more intimate scale? A commercial theater is a special place, isolated from the rest of the world, where you expect to be transported to the magical world of the silver screen. The “movie-only” home theater might be placed a distance from the main living spaces in your home to help reinforce the sense of isolation and to also control sound. It might have a décor that is reminiscent of a vintage theater from long ago. A home theater design like this would have a different set of design criteria than one that is intended to be used both for viewing movies and regular television.

A home theater design intended to be used for both movie viewing and television might be less isolated. In fact, it might be best if it is immediately adjacent to the family room rather than placed far away. A home theater design like this might be more properly called a Media Room. It might have windows, so it does not feel like a cave when watching the big game. But those windows could be fitted with black-out curtains to convert into the “isolation chamber” that is more conducive to movie viewing. Media rooms need to be chameleons, of a sort, and adapt to several types of viewing experiences.

Once you have decided on the type of home theater you want, you need to plan the room size, shape, and location within the house. Whether you are designing your house from scratch or if you are choosing the perfect room to convert into a home theater, it is usually best to avoid rooms with a lot of natural light, even with black-out curtains. Lots of outside light can be difficult to control and will interfere with the visual quality of your movies. This means no skylights and minimal windows. The best place often is in the basement for a true, movie only” home theater.

Don’t neglect the acoustics. Of course, a home theater or media room should have sound insulation if its walls, floor, and ceiling to keep the booming bass from disturbing other parts of the house and noisy kids and flushing toilets from interfering with a dramatic moment on the screen.

But acoustics is not just about sound transmission. Good acoustics can improve the sound quality within the room. Room that are too lively and reflect sounds off hard walls, floors, and ceilings, can be uncomfortable. Movie dialog can become unintelligible. Movie watchers can become exhausted and uncomfortable. Soft finishes, like carpet and padded wall coverings can aid in getting just the right amount of sound reflection, but not too much. If you really want the maximum movie experience, hire a specialist to advice on the proper sound system and room finishes to produce perfect audio. Nothing makes movies more special than perfect sound quality.

Don’t get too far ahead of yourself, though. First settle on the room dimensions and location within the house. Once that is determined, you can dig into the “nuts and bolts” of the design and start making decisions and choices about Home Theater Design Plans, Home Theater Seating Layout, the home theater screen, a projection television, or big screen LED or plasma television, acoustics, lighting, audio systems, automation, and interior design and finishes. For a quick reference, check out our Home Theater Tips. If you get all of this right, you’ll be sure your home theater design or media room design makes the most of the space available and creates an amazing theater experience.

I hope this information is helpful to you. You might want to get yourself a copy of my best-seller, Designing Your Perfect House. It is chockfull of valuable tips and advice that will save you many times the cost of the book on your house building or remodeling project. You might also like The Well-Centered Home: Simple Steps to Increase Mindfulness, Self-Awareness, and Happiness Where You Live. It will show you how to make your home a happy place.

The post Home Theater Design Ideas and Advice appeared first on Designing Your Perfect House.

We explained these design “rules” in our article, Home Theater Design Plans. I suggest you read those first or reread them to refresh your memory. The viewing angles and the maximum and minimum viewing distances should be the determining factors for your home theater seating plan. You want your viewers to be sitting within the optimal viewing area.

Your room size will determine the best screen size for your home theater. Or if you are building a new room in a new house or within an existing house, you may have a screen size in mind and/or a number of viewers you would want to accommodate. In that case you will want to size the room to match the chosen screen size and number of viewers.

Here are a few home theater rooms of various sizes and screen sizes to help you with your planning. By the way, the seating shown in these plans is the larger, reclining “easy-chair” type of home theater seating. The dashed lines in front of and behind the seats indicates where the seat will be when fully reclined. If you choose smaller seats, you will be able to fit more seats within the optimal viewing area.

12′ x 15′ Home Theater with Five Seats

14′ x 18′ Home Theater with Seven Seats

16′ x 20′ Home Theater with Nine Seats

16′ x 24′ Home Theater with Fourteen Seats

Note: the second and third row seats are shown as non-reclining.

I hope these home theater seating layout drawings are helpful in planning your home theater. Just remember to allow space on the sides and the rear of the seating to optimize the audio performance. Placing seats right up against the rear or side walls will affect how the bass audio sounds in those seats. You need room for the sound to bounce off the walls a bit.

I hope this information is helpful to you. You might want to get yourself a copy of my best-seller, Designing Your Perfect House. It is chockfull of valuable tips and advice that will save you many times the cost of the book on your house building or remodeling project. You might also like The Well-Centered Home: Simple Steps to Increase Mindfulness, Self-Awareness, and Happiness Where You Live. It will show you how to make your home a happy place.

The post Creating a Correct Home Theater Seating Layout appeared first on Designing Your Perfect House.

Designing and building a home theater can be the perfect addition to a home. It creates a great place to watch television or movies and enjoy the program with minimal distractions. Since home theaters are specially designed to maximize the viewing experience, they allow you to enjoy all the benefits of an actual movie theater without leaving your home. Once you have decided that you would like to create a home theater, one of the most critical steps is planning the layout and design of the room. Here are some tips to make sure your home theater makes the most of the space available and creates a genuine theater experience.

Creating the Theater Atmosphere

When choosing the perfect room to convert into a home theater, it is best to avoid rooms with a ton of natural light. This means no skylights and minimal windows. The best place often is in the basement. But if you plan to use the room to watch sports or other television, you may want to be in a room with windows. In that case, consider installing blackout curtains to keep out the sun for daytime movie screenings while still giving you the option to open the windows and watch the snow fall while the football game is on.

Similarly, lights with dimmers can be very beneficial as well. This type of lighting system can help ensure that the lights are not too bright as to cause a glare on the screen, but also light enough that no one will trip when moving about the room. Dimmers are a great tool for controlling the ambiance of the theater experience. And consider cove lighting at the top of the walls and wall sconces. Providing “layers” of dimmable lighting will give you total control of the “feel” of the room.

The Sound is Half the Experience

Similar to the importance of controlling how much light can enter the space, creating the theater effect also requires using sound to amplify the experience. Surround sound speakers should be used, complete with a sub-woofer to really punch out the bass. Many home theater designers also find it beneficial to place padded fabric on the walls to help control reverberation (echoes) in the room. The walls, floor and ceiling should be sound-insulated to allow you to crank up the volume without disturbing others in the house. Products like fiberglass sound insulation, mass-loaded vinyl sheets behind the drywall, and extra-dense drywall, like QuietRock will help keep those dramatic theater sounds inside the room and not let them echo throughout the house.

Placement is Everything

The position of the seating area proportional to the viewing screen is critical to creating a perfect home theater experience. No one should be so far away from the screen where they feel they have to squint to see the screen and also that no one sits so close that they have to keep moving their heads to see the entire screen. Typically, the larger the screen the further back the seating should be. If the space in the home theater is limited, a smaller screen size will be better than a larger screen. To figure out the closest optimum viewing distance, multiply the diagonal screen size by 1.6. That means for a 50” screen, you would not want to sit closer than 80” away, or 6’-8” away. To calculate the farthest optimal viewing distance, multiply the diagonal screen size by 2.5. For a 50” screen, that means 125” or 10’-5.” For a 70” screen, the range of optimal viewing distance would be from 9’-4” to 14’-7.”  The center of the screen should be slightly above eye-level when you are seated. If you plan on have more than one row of seating, consider stepping the floor up as you get further from the screen to allow clear sight lines for the viewers in the back rows.

Ensure a Fantastic Viewing Selection

Building the most elaborate and perfectly designed home theater will not do much good if there is nothing enjoyable to watch. You’ll want a great cable package, such as those offered by DirecTV. The wider the range of network television shows, movies, sports games, the better. And of course, you will want to be able to record shows to watch at another time. DirecTV is currently being offered at www.SaveOnTVDirect.com with Sunday Ticket and three free months of HBO. Adding in a Netflix subscription will make sure you never run out of shows and movies to watch.

Creating a home theater can be the perfect addition to nearly any home. People use them to entertain small parties, or to relax by themselves while watching a favorite program. Taking the time to plan your home theater properly can help make sure that the entire home theater experience is as enjoyable for everyone as possible.

Read more about Home Theater Design Here.

I hope this information is helpful to you. You might want to get yourself a copy of my best-seller, Designing Your Perfect House. It is chockfull of valuable tips and advice that will save you many times the cost of the book on your house building or remodeling project. You might also like The Well-Centered Home: Simple Steps to Increase Mindfulness, Self-Awareness, and Happiness Where You Live. It will show you how to make your home a happy place.

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