Home Theater Seating Ideas
Brian Patrick Flynn
If you're planning a new home theater installation or looking to upgrade an existing home theater, one or your first tasks will be to explore home theater seating ideas. Comfortable, stylish seating options abound for home theaters, which have become much more prevalent in modern homes. The in-home theater experience can be greatly enhanced by a well-planned seating scheme, so you'll want to put seating style and design high on the list of home theater to-dos.
Amazing Home Theater Designs
See All Photos
Your first choice when it comes to home theater seating will be whether to emulate the feel of a traditional cinema or to explore a seating scheme that's a little more "media room" than "immersive theater experience."
If you choose to configure your home theater space in a way that's similar to an actual cinema—with, for example, stadium seating, dramatic curtains covering the walls and projection or TV screen, and cinema-style floor and wall lighting—then you'll probably want your seating design to feel like a traditional cinema's as well. Your options to reflect this design will be broad. If an authentic movie-house feel is what you're looking for, you could choose to feature actual cinema seats, with classic flip-up seating and velour upholstery—or go even further back and explore vintage wooden theater seats. Theater seats from the silent film era to the present are available via online and brick-and-mortar antique shops if vintage seating is on the marquee for your home theater.
If you're looking for a more updated experience but still want your home theater to have that movie-house feel, there are a multitude of options for modern home theater seating. Many homeowners choose to reflect a classic cinema layout, with rows of seating, potentially arranged stadium-style. The seats themselves are often plush, arm-chair-like single seats or rows of seats, often featuring individual cup holders, trays and other convenient accessories to help guests enjoy the show. Pricing tiers for these home theater seats run the gamut from quite affordable models with fabric or faux-leather upholstery, to extremely high-end versions in top-quality leather, with electronic adjustability and even the ability to rumble underneath guests when the action on screen gets particularly intense.
If your home theater is a smaller affair or falls somewhere between the multiplex and the media room, stadium seating and multiple banks of theater-style chairs may be a bit dramatic for the space. Instead, you may want to consider a more traditional, understated approach, with a simple array of couches and armchairs. For smaller spaces in particular, a comfortable wrap-around couch framing the room and potentially complemented by one or two armchairs can ably serve the purpose of providing plenty of great seating options for large numbers of guests.
See Also: Planning Your Own Home Theater
