Home Theater Seating Guide

You are planning on a media room or dedicated home theater room. You need to know everything about home theater seating. This guide will educate the home theater buyer on how to buy home theater seating.

The first thing a buyer needs to do is measure the theater room in its entirety. Once you have obtained measurements of the room. You should make sure potential seating dimensions work in your space.

Top four considerations when buying home theater furniture.

1. The width of the viewing screen. The optimum viewing distance is 1.5 to 2 times the width of your viewing screen. After you have decided this, you now know where to start your first row of seats.
2. Should I put a second row of seats in my theater? A second row may need a raised platform at least 7 inches in order to see over the front row of seats. For most theater loungers you'll need at least a 72-inch depth platform for your 2nd row of seats.
3. How many seats across can I fit? This the width measurement. The optimum is four seats across for home theater. HTmarket.com features space planning tools for Palliser seating.
4. Do you need an aisle? Center aisle or side aisle. Most rooms feature side aisles. A three-foot aisle is ideal. The best advice is to measure your room twice. The proper fit is imperative to your theater. Most home theater seating is special order and not returnable to retailers.

Most home theater seating feature wall saver or wall hugger design. The recliner inclines versus reclines allowing you to put the chairs close to the wall usually about 4 inches space required. You should check product specs to figure out how much space you'll need in back of the chair. If it's a wallhugger design, you may need more space in front of the chair to allow for the footrest to come out. The depth of the chair will be the key measurement.

The Top 4 Measurements
1. Depth in full recline position
2. Depth in upright position
3. Measurement from front of the chair to front of the footrest.
4. Measurement from foot of the chair to back of the headrest.

Fixed home theater seating is similar to real movie theater seating with a rocking mechanism. Most varieties of movie theater seating don't recline they rock. The advantage to these seats is that you can fit more of them in a limited space than recliners. The most common use is placing these seats on a second-row platform in home theater, apartment building theaters, condo association theaters and home theaters that want to achieve the movie theater look. Fixed theater seating is not as comfortable as recliners, but it has its place in some home theaters. The trend with apartment and condo complexes is to build a community theater for the residents. This provides an amenity for community living. In this case, movie theater seating makes sense so you can fit larger numbers of people in a smaller space. The viewing time is usually limited to a few hours at a time versus home theaters where people tend to use for tv, movie and gaming which extends the time utilization of the seats. HTmarket.com recommends recliners with cupholders for home theaters.

Helpful Links
1. Movie Theater Seating

• Pre-Built Home Theater Seating
  For customers on a limited budget with limited time for delivery. HTmarket.com offers quick ship HT Design seating. Quick ship seating is seating that is normally in stock. The seating is prebuilt theater seating with limited color choices. The most common color available in pre-built seating is black and brown leather match or black bonded leather. Our line of HT Design seating has everything you would want in a custom seat including power recline, USB power ports, tray tables and storage. The quality is excellent, and the values are outstanding. What you see is what you get with prebuilt seating. We offer multiple configurations. We can usually deliver within 7-10 business days into your home.


Helpful Links
1. HT Design Quick Ship Theater Seating


• Special Order or Custom Theater Seating
  For customers with a little better budget that have planned their lead time properly, we recommend custom home theater seating from the HT Design Your Way collection. In this case, you can pick and choose configurations that include loveseats, oversized chairs, pick from over 10 covers available, choose power recline, power headrest, power lumbar and all over leather. In short, you have many choices to build the seating you want. Keep in mind, special order seating can take 12 weeks to ship depending on the style you choose.


Helpful Links
1. Home Theater Seating
2. HT Design Your Way Home Theater Seating

If you choose to do custom theater seating or special-order seating. Most brands offer power recline as an option or manual recline as standard. The manual recline in most theater seats covers three positions. Upright, Middle, and all the way back recline. The most common one used is middle depth recline. The power recline has unlimited recline positions as you can recline the seat to your own position. This is like power recline in your car seat. We recommend this feature in customer ordered seating. It's an excellent option. If you order power recline, you will need a power outlet near the seats. Most motors put out 4 amps of power so a normal wall socket will do or power strip. Many of the new seating lines add power headrest and power lumbar as well. The HT Design Waveland and HT Design Clark are good examples of a full featured chair that has 7 color led lighting and memory button as well, and three-way power.

The hardest choice in customer theater seating is to choose a cover. We will help you with considerations for choosing fabrics. We recommend you order a swatch. We do offer online ordering of some swatches including HT Design and Palliser.

• Microfiber
  Microfiber is a man-made fabric with polyesters and nylon. Microfiber repels water or liquids making furniture difficult to stain. It is very soft and comfortable fabric and an excellent option to leather. HTmarket.com stocks one seat call HT Design Addison in black microfiber. We do offer our HT Design Your Way line in many colors of microfiber and leather.


• Leather
  Leather is a natural material that breathes which adds more comfort by feeling warm in winter and cool in summer. It actually adjusts to body temperature. It's durable and easy to care for. It requires occasional dusting and wiping with damp cloth. A soft pencil eraser will easily remove most scuffs or marks. The price you pay for leather furnishings will always be a function of its grade and processing. There's a wide range between the price of a sofa made from a corrected-grain, pigmented leather, and a sofa made from pure aniline leather. One way to save money but still enjoy the prestige and comfort of leather is to choose a leather and vinyl combination. Applied to a home theater chair or sofa, this technique puts genuine leather everywhere the body touches, and places perfectly matched vinyl in less visible areas. Learn more about leather.


• Leather Vinyl, Leather Match, and Leatherette
  This is a great money saving alternative while still enjoying the benefits of leather. The leather is on the front of back, top of seat, top of arm rest and footrest. The leather is everywhere you touch. The vinyl is on sides and back. The key consideration for choosing this option is make sure that the color will match right with a vinyl.

Helpful Links
1. Custom Home Theater Seating Fabric and Leather

The line is blurring between sectional sofas and home theater seating. You will see that you can make home theater seating look like sectionals and some sectionals have home theater seating attributes like cupholders, power recline and storage. How to choose? If your room is a family room/media room a home theater sectional would be an appropriate choice. For a dedicated theater room, the home theater seating options may work for your taste. There is no hard and fast rule when choosing sectional versus seating. We have seen dedicated rooms with sectionals and family rooms with home theater seating. It all depends on how you like to relax.

Most customers call and say I don't have time to research all this and choose. We can help by asking you a few questions to get an idea on what to recommend for your home theater or media room. So, the best advice is to seek advice. Call HTmarket.com at 888-764-9273 and we can help with your selections.