The Home Theater

The synonym for ultimate relaxation and a perfect Sunday evening in the comfort of your own home is definitely the home theater. If you have a room to spare, transforming it into a home theater will bring the cinematic experience just a few steps away from your bedroom.

But where do you start? What are the practical features that are needed for a good home theater? What type of seating arrangements will you need? What should the acoustics in the room be like? What type of projector is perfect for home theaters? We’ll answer these questions and more as we dive further into the topic of home theaters.

Designing Your Home Theater

If you’re building a house from scratch, you’ll have a lot more liberty in terms of choosing the perfect layout of your home theater. But, if you’re redesigning one of the rooms in your home into a home theater, the choices are a bit limited.

Regardless of whether you’re transforming your basement, attic, spare bedroom, or family room, or you’re creating a whole new space as a home theater, there are some essentials to consider and elements that you can’t do without.

Home Theater Dimensions

The size of your home theater will naturally depend on the size of the room. Just keep in mind that this room should be at least 4.5m wide and 6m long to fit the AV/rack, aisles with seats, speakers, the screen, and a bar area if you want to include one. For optimal viewing and access to all suitable screens, the height of the room should be at least 2.2m.

The shape of the room should be determined by the following parameters; the ratio of the room in terms of width should be at least 1.6 times the ceiling height, while the length should be at least 2.3 times the ceiling height. Choosing a rectangular area is the best option if you're converting an existing room.

The Home Theater Seating Arrangement

Let’s start with the seating arrangement. When choosing the seats for your home theater, you need to base your decision on three factors: cost, comfort, and ergonomics. The perfect home theater seats are:

• Recliners
• Love Seats
• Sectionals
• Loungers
• Stadium Seating
  

To make sure that your seats last a long time, opt for quality materials that are resistant to staining, like leather, and include a cup holder and popcorn holder for maximum pleasure.

When it comes to their placement, first consider the king’s chair’s location, which is the seat that has the best view in the whole room. Since you probably won’t be watching movies with a group of friends all the time, it’s important that you design your home theater around one or two seats. Place the king’s chair in the middle of the room and use it as a base point for determining the screen size, the speakers, the lighting, and all additional equipment.

To determine where to place the screening room seats, follow the standards of either The Society of Motion Picture in Theater Engineers (SMPTE), which recommend a 30-degree viewing angle from the screen, or the THX, which recommends a 36-degree viewing angle. Choose one of them to ensure you have the optimal viewing experience.

In terms of the number of rows, most home cinemas have 1-3 rows of seats. This, of course, depends on the size of the room and the maximum number of people you want to accommodate. Have at least 50 cm between each row to allow comfortable seating, and for optimal viewing, include risers of about 30 cm so the people in the back rows can see the entire screen properly.

The Projector and Screen in Your Home Theater

Our first recommendation is to opt for an acoustically transparent projector screen that can be placed in front of the speakers.

Next, determine the aspect ratio of the screen. For home theaters, you should go with the 16:9 aspect ratio (a common aspect ratio for TV and streamlining services), the Cinemascope 2.35:1 aspect ratio (the aspect ratio of modern movies), or the multi-format screen that can mask part of the screen and adjust to the aspect ratio of the movie or show that you’re watching.

The viewing distance between the screen and the king’s chair should be about 3 times the height of the screen, and the mounting position should be determined based on the eye line of the person sitting in the king’s chair that’s located at one-third of the height of the screen.

The projector, on the other hand, should be placed on the opposite wall of the screen, behind the seating area. The throw distance of the projector is also important, and if you consider a 100’’ screen, you can choose between projectors with a:

• Ultra short throw (10-70 cm from the screen)
• Short throw (1.7 m from the screen)
• Regular throw (2.5 m from the screen)

The Sound System in Your Home Theater

The sound system and the room’s acoustics are the yin to the screen and projector’s yang, so let’s see what you need for a great sound system.

Simply adding two speakers to a room with a screen won’t make it a home theater. Instead, you’ll need to design a surround-sound speaker setup, so you’ll have high-quality sound coming from all sides of your room.

When we look at surround sound setups, they often have two to three numbers that refer to the number of different types of speakers. Let's take the 9.2.4 surround sound setup, for example. The first number refers to the number of standard speakers, the middle one to the number of subwoofers in the setup, and the third refers to the number of overhead Dolby Atmos speakers.

The speakers in home theaters are divided into four categories; the central channel speakers, the overhead speakers, the side speakers, and the subwoofers. Each has a specific role, so naturally, you need all of them for a good surround system. Place the subwoofers on the ground under the screen and the central channel speakers behind the projector screen if you have an acoustically transparent projector. The side speakers should be located on both sides of the seating area, while the overhead speakers should be mounted on the ceiling behind the seating area.

The minimum amount of speakers you need for a home cinema is the 5.1 surround sound system, which contains one front subwoofer, but you’ll get the best sound quality if you go with the 9.1 surround sound system that has additional side and back speakers. An optimal surround system in terms of quality of sound and affordability is the 7.1 surround sound system.

Acoustics In Your Home Theater

Acoustics is a field of study that determines how sound is transmitted in a closed room. Therefore, taking acoustics into consideration when designing a home theater will optimize the sound emitted from the sound system.

To do this, you should optimize the effects of direct sound, which need to be equal to the reflected sound (the sound that gets reflected when a sound wave reaches a physical barrier). Ideally, the only surfaces that reflect sound in the home theater should be the walls.

To improve the acoustics in your home theater, you need to:

• Cover 20% of the walls and ceiling with a sound-absorbing material
• Cover 30% of the walls and ceiling with a sound-scattering material
• Leave the remaining 50% of walls and ceiling uncovered to generate reflected sound
• Add carpeting to your floors to absorb sound

To make the viewing experience even better without disturbing the other members of your household, you’ll also need to soundproof the room. For this, you’ll need to:

• Either add sound-absorbing panels on the walls of the room or soundproof the room with a sound-reducing wallboard
• Add a thick entrance door
• Use draft stoppers to close off any gaps that are left under the door

The Home Theater Receiver

Last but not least, you’ll need to choose a receiver for your home theater. Make sure that the one you end up choosing has the following features:

• Enough HDMI ports (at least 3, but 4 is ideal)
• Enough ports for audio channels (depending on how many speakers you have in your surround system)
• WIFI and Bluetooth connectivity
• It should handle 4K resolution, and maybe even 8K if you have the budget for it
• It should handle all 3 HDR formats
• It should be equipped with Dolby Atmos surround sound technology

Other Elements You Should Consider

Apart from the main elements that we discussed above, you should also consider the room’s design, as well as lights, wiring, and electrical outlets.

Color

Brightly colored walls have no place in your home theater as they will bounce the light from the projector around the room. Instead, go for deep greens, blues, and reds, as well as dark browns or greys. The ceiling should also have a dark color so the light doesn’t reflect off the ceiling, which will give you a real cinema experience.

Lighting

Generally, you’ll need to be able to adjust the lights based on the type of movie or show that you're watching. You should have bright lights for when you’re cleaning up the room, but you should also include ambiance and movie-mode lighting to enhance the viewing experience. If you use this room for other purposes, make sure that you install additional lights.

Outlets and Wires

For safety purposes, have a professional electrician do your lighting and wiring. It’s important to invest in quality cables and install the wires in the walls for a clean home theater look. You can also hide the wires in plastic strips if you want to have easier access when changing some cables. A good cable-management system is essential for a home theater.

Final Thoughts

After going through all the steps of designing a home theater, we believe that you should now be confident to undertake this interesting project and design a home theater in your house. But remember, the home theater isn’t just seating arrangements, projectors, screens, and soundproofing. For a truly unique home theater, you’ll need to add your personal touch and decorate the room to make it your own.

You can do this by adding posters from your favorite movies, showcase action figures and other memorabilia, add cozy blankets and pillows on the chairs, and even make this room multifunctional by adding a bar area where you can host your friends, play board games, or even use this room as an office and make use of those soundproofing options.