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.
How to Choose Theater Seating Watch our video on how to select the right seating for your home theater room. Professor talks about custom, quick ship and fixed installation seats. He also speaks to room dimensions and viewing distance calculation needed to select the right number of seats and rows.
The first thing a buyer needs to do is measure the theater room in it's 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.
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.
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 are 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.
Top Selling Home Theater Seating VideoCheck out this video to learn more about HTmarket's HT Design Theater Seating Line. If you have few minutes you can see them all. We have 100's of satisfied customers ordering these styles. You won't go wrong with any of these theater styles...
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.
FabricsThe 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 on line ordering of some swatches including HT Design and Palliser.
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.
Ask For Help and AdviceMost 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.