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Home Theater Speaker Layout Options: • Home Theater Speaker L...
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Audio Advice has designed and installed over a thousand theaters and this video is part of our Home Theater Design Series that covers virtually everything about designing a home theater. In this video, we’re going be talking about laying out the physical space for your home theater. We’ll discuss all the different aspects of laying out your room and how to handle the elements of your room that you can control, and also those that you cannot control.
If you’re lucky enough to be designing your home theater from scratch, there are some ratios you can use to get your room to great basic shape. The most famous is the golden ratio of 1 to 1.6 to 2.6.. As an example, a room with a 10-foot high ceiling would ideally be 16 feet wide and 26 feet long. No room is perfect, but getting close to the golden ratio and avoiding dimensions that are multiples of each other will ensure your room has fairly consistent bass in the main seating area.
Take a look at our article and video on speaker layouts to get an idea of where they might need to be located before you start adding other elements. If you have the luxury of designing your room from scratch, this process is usually much more straightforward. The big decision is deciding what speaker layout you want--this could be a basic 5.1 setup or a full-blown 7.2.4 setup or even beyond this. For more information on what all these numbers mean, check out our article and video on surround sound options or go to our interactive tool and play around with the different options.
When you’re designing your home theater layout, in general, the screen wall will typically be the short wall. Obviously, your seating layout will affect this, especially in family rooms, but at the very least try to get the screen centered on the seating area with your speakers an equal distance off to each side of the video display. If you’re using a front projection system, you also have the option of putting the front speakers behind the screen.
You want to try to prevent light from windows from spilling onto your screen. If you have windows, consider using some sort of blackout curtain or shade. Heavy curtains often provide an acoustic benefit too! If you think about the last time you were in a commercial theater you probably noticed there were no windows and the walls and ceiling were painted dark. This is especially important for home theater rooms with a front projection screen. Most screens reflect light off at a pretty wide-angle and you don’t want that light reflecting back off the walls. Dark grey is an ideal color, but whatever you choose, make sure you use a matte or flat paint finish. When it comes to lighting, you will want to consider task lighting, accent lighting, and safety lighting. Adding remote control to the lighting also adds a super cool wow factor to your home theater.
If you are going for a real home theater experience with a large screen and multiple rows of seating, you’ll need to think about sightlines. Sightlines are the angle and direction the screen is viewed from each seating position. When you have more than one row of seating, a riser is needed so the back row can see over the front row without being blocked. In general, you want at least an 8” high riser. If you have the ceiling height you should go even higher. A 12 or 16-inch platform is even better for the rear rows.
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