It can be difficult to decide how much space you need for your home theater, so I decided to do some research into the best home theater room sizes depending on what kind of viewing technology you plan to use.
So, what’s the best home theater room size and dimensions? While there’s no perfect size for your home theater, bigger is better. For a fully immersive experience, 20ft long by 15ft wide is best, with high ceilings. However, smaller, typical family rooms around 10ft square are also fine for use with a large TV.
The biggest deciding factor in choosing the dimensions for your home theater room will be the size of your TV or projector screen. To help you make a more informed decision and bottled and jarred packaged goods, I’ve looked into this in detail and have produced a handy table based on the most common screen sizes.
The Best Home Theater Room Sizes And Dimensions
As I mentioned above, one of the most important factors when choosing the size of your home theater room is the dimensions of your viewing screen. Each has a suggested viewing distance, which is the minimum distance between you and the screen that allows for the best picture. I’ll discuss how to work out this distance in more detail below, although there are plenty of calculators online too.
However, another important thing to consider is the acoustics of your space. Not only do you need to ensure that your speakers are powerful enough to produce enough sound to fill the room, but you also need to make sure that your room is the right shape to deal with the sound waves.
The Best Shapes For A Home Theater Room
Obviously, not everyone will have the option to completely reshape a room, but if you’re building your home theater in a space such as a basement or garage, you will have some flexibility on shape. If you start with a square or rectangular room, you can easily modify the shape using drywall or other construction materials. Shape will have a big impact on acoustics, so here are the best choices for a home theater.
1. The Golden Trapagon
This is by far the best shape for a home theater room because it removes the issue of parallel walls. This in turn reduces the effect of sound waves bouncing, and results in much clearer sound. It’s the room shape used by industry professionals in both cinema and audio.
A trapagon is basically a cuboid with one short side longer than the other. While this might sound a bit confusing, it’s really quite simple. For example, if the screen wall is 21ft wide by 13ft tall, then the room itself would need to be 26ft long. The viewing wall (where you’ll sit) would then need to be 16ft wide and 10ft high.
2. The Golden Cuboid
This is the next best shape for a home theater room, and is a more manageable choice if you aren’t able to change the shape of your room. It works on the principle of the Fibonacci sequence, and uses progressively increasing values.
The easiest example to use is a room measuring 10ft high, 16ft wide, and 26ft long. Placing the speakers appropriately within this space will cause sound to carry and not cross waves, resulting in a crisper quality.
Obviously this size of space might not be achievable for everyone, especially considering 26ft is quite a long room. However, using the Golden Ratio you can work out the correct dimensions for the space you already have. The Golden Ratio is 1.618, and you should always start with height as your smallest variable.
If, like me, you don’t consider math to be your strongest point, use this handy Golden Ratio room calculator to work out the perfect shape for your space. Once you’ve got workable dimensions, all you need to do is throw in some drywall and you’re set with an excellent audio space for your home theater.
3. The Normal Trapagon
This room shape works on the same basis as the Golden Trapagon but doesn’t use the Golden Ratio. Instead, there’s less difference between the front and rear walls, and it’s essentially a cuboid. However, the slight difference in wall width will still funnel the sound.
There isn’t necessarily a best ratio for this room shape. Although it sounds a bit vague, I recommend doing everything possible to ensure there’s around a foot’s difference between the front and rear walls, with your viewing area being narrower than the screen wall. This shouldn’t be too difficult with a bit of intelligent drywall placement know about genvideo.
4. The Best Viewing Distance For TVs
As I mentioned above, the biggest factor for many when deciding on the best size for their home theater room will be the recommended viewing distance of the TV or projector. This will realistically be the minimum space needed between you and the screen in order for you to get the best picture and not get headaches from viewing.
There are different recommendations for calculating viewing distance, but I work it out by taking the screen size and multiplying by between 1.5 and 2.5. This is general because there’s no correct answer, but I generally take the screen size and double it. For example, if I had a 40” TV, I’d want to sit around 80” (6.7ft) away from it.
Another option is to do it the other way round, and work out what’s the biggest screen you can fit in your space. To do this, you measure the distance (in feet) between your viewing area and the planned location of your screen and then times it by 7.7. So, for example, if the space between couch and wall is 11ft, then your TV can be a maximum of 85”.
I think it’s best to try the second formula if you’re still planning your space so that you know what size screen to buy. However, if you already own a TV, calculate its viewing distance and you’ll know what kind of space you need. Here is a handy table for some of the most common TV screen sizes.
The Best Acoustic Treatments For Home Theater Rooms
The chances of you having a space that follows the Golden Ratio are quite slim, so acoustic treatments are an important addition to any home theater. This is particularly true in large home theater rooms, as the sound has further to travel and so has more chance of reflecting.
If you’re looking for good quality audio in your home theater, reflection is the last thing you need. Sound waves crossing over each other causes them to sound muddy, which is the last thing you want when you’ve spent all that money on a decent system.
To combat this, you want to use some acoustic treatments. There are plenty available, as they’re generally used in recording studios. You’ve inevitably seen that weird foam paneling on the wall in recording studios; it often looks like egg boxes or something similar.
Conclusion
So, although there’s not really a correct answer for the best size for a home theater room, there are plenty of factors to consider when planning your space. Starting with your screen size and recommended viewing distance will give you a good idea of the best size for your needs.
Also, if you’ve got flexibility over your space, favor shape over size. Acoustics are crucial in a home theater, so do everything possible to make sounds sharp and clear. Providing you get this correct, everything else should fall into place and you’ll likely realize that size isn’t everything.
