Home Theater Seating

One issue you may not have given a lot of consideration when planning your home theater set up is seating. You may already own a living room set and have no plans to change that out. That’s not a problem. But placement of the furniture is something you might want to consider in order to maximize the home theater effect. The Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers have actually given this issue a lot of thought, and real paying theaters take it very seriously.  According to recent guidelines set by the industry, “…a screen appears large when it occupies a substantial portion of a viewer’s horizontal and vertical field of vision. Our experience indicates that the screen image will appear small [in a theater environment] if the image occupies less than 15% of the viewer’s vertical field of vision or less than approximately 30% of the viewer’s horizontal field.”

This is a fancy way of saying, don’t sit too close, or the screen will actually appear smaller and you will have a substandard viewing experience. Another issue to keep in mind is the type of TV and projection system you will be using. Keep in mind when placing your furniture that some models cannot be viewed as well from an angle and place your seats as front and center if you can.