What’s a Good Size Room For a Home Cinema?
I get asked this question a lot.
The determining factors for how big your cinema room needs to be are:
1) How many seats you want to fit in the room
2) The performance level of the cinema, which dictates the level of soundproofing required, and internal spacing
3) Whether you want an aesthetic finish with hidden speakers
4) Whether the performance at every seat matters equally, or if the focus is on just a few
Every room has its challenges
Creating the ‘perfect’ home cinema room, while technically possible, is usually unrealistic.
There is always some amount of compromise involved. Rather than just talking about it, I’ve drafted 4 common room sizes with examples of what does, and doesn’t work in each of them.
Keep in mind that I’ve assumed a fixed level of soundproofing for all of these room sizes, which adds 160mm additional to each stud wall internally. This would decrease reference level sound to TV levels of noise outside of the room.
I’ve also allowed space for false/fabric walls to hide speakers where I usually would in a modern design.
These designs aren’t optimised to suit any particular individuals needs.
They are intended to be used as a guide for what can be achieved in a specific room size, they don’t necessarily represent the best solution for your room, even if its the same size.
Without further ado…
Room 1 - 5x6m Internal
The Good
The front row of seats are optimally placed to avoid problematic audio zones affecting bass performance.
The front row of seats fall right inside the maximum viewing angle for modern (4k+) content, with a near wall to wall screen, increasing immersion.
The Bad
The rear row of seats are outside of the reference viewing angle, making the visual performance sub-optimal. This can be especially important if the owner watches older content (1080p and lower), where the front row may feel too close.
The rear row are against the rear wall, where bass performance is at its worst, and surround sound is indistinguishable due to the imbalance between volume levels of rear speakers when sitting too close.
The front row seat closest to the side wall will have poor surround sound performance for the same reason.
The front row are all slightly offset from middle, potentially making the room look odd and imbalanced.
One row of stairs can cause disruption if the person in the furthest rear seat needs to leave the room.
Overall
If you’re in the front row, in the middle 3 seats, you’re likely going to be happy watching modern movies in this room. But the relatively small room size does result in heavy trade-offs for the rear row. Depending where the door needs to be, there may be other trade-offs involved as well.
Room 2 - 6x7m Internal
The Good
The front row of seats are optimally placed to avoid problematic audio zones affecting bass performance.
The front row of seats fall right inside the maximum viewing angle for modern (4k+) content, with a near wall to wall screen, increasing immersion.
The rear row of seats are right on the reference viewing angle for all content (1080p+), providing a second option for optimal content viewing.
There is space for steps on either side of the front row, if it has 4 seats or less.
The rear row are far enough off the rear wall to allow for a fabric wall system to wrap around the entire room, improving aesthetics, and providing more opportunity for better acoustic treatment.
The Bad
The rear row are still a little too close to the rear wall, affecting bass performance.
Surround sound will be imbalanced to certain seats in the rear row that are too close to surround speakers.
Overall
There’s far more good here than bad. This is a decent size if you’re happy with the number of ‘good’ seats. The rear row can be tweaked slightly to have one extra ‘good’ seat, but at the cost of one seat overall, bring the overall seat count to 8, which is often enough for the average home cinema.
Room 3 - 7x9m Internal
The Good
The front row of seats are fairly optimally placed to avoid problematic audio zones affecting bass performance.
The front row of seats fall right inside the maximum viewing angle for modern (4k+) content, with a near wall to wall screen, increasing immersion.
The rear row of seats fall inside the reference viewing angle for all content (1080p+), providing a second option for optimal content viewing.
There is space for steps on either side of the front row, and the steps can be larger than the minimum if seats allow.
The rear row are far enough off the rear wall to allow for improved bass performance, making them almost as optimal as the front row.
You can fit a lot of seats in this room, and still have ample space for aesthetics.
The Bad
This is a bit of an odd internal length, causing both front and rear rows to be a little closer to problematic bass zones than is optimal, but this is treatable with a powerful enough audio system, and advanced enough cinema processor.
Overall
As you may have noticed, as the room gets bigger, problems get a little easier to address. Keep in mind though, the bigger the room, the bigger the speaker system, projector, and screen; costs for the room can start to creep into unrealistic territory. It’s important to understand the performance requirements, and budget requirements, when specifying a cinema this large.
Room 4 - 8x10m Internal
The Good
The front row of seats are fairly optimally placed to avoid problematic audio zones affecting bass performance.
The front row of seats fall right inside the maximum viewing angle for modern (4k+) content, with a truly wall to wall screen, increasing immersion significantly.
The rear row of seats fall well inside the reference viewing angle for all content (1080p+), providing a second option for optimal content viewing.
There is space for steps on either side of the front row, and the steps can be larger than the minimum if seats allow.
The rear row are far enough off the rear wall to allow for substantially improved bass performance, making them as optimal as the front row.
You can fit a lot of seats in this room, and still have ample space for aesthetics.
The Bad
This is a big room, and the space can feel a little unused without a third row. A third row is an option, but throws the screen calculation way off, making it smaller to suit the closer row of seats.
Overall
Another relatively big room, with the same budget considerations as mentioned previously. A room of this size has the flexibility to be used in a number of different ways, this is just one version of what it could look like. There may be value in breaking a room this size into a projection room, and the cinema itself, depending on seating and other requirements.
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