Ryan Beaugureau is an electronics specialist and the owner of HAVPRO, a home theater systems installer located in Maricopa County. Through his company, Beaugureau has helped create custom home theaters for high-end clients throughout Arizona. In this article, he explains whether theater-style seating is a good option for someone who may not have a dedicated movie-watching room in his home.
It is not uncommon for a client to ask about installing theater-style seating in his living room or den. For the most part, though, this is an idea I discourage.
If you have an actual home theater that is separate from the rest of your home, then I think investing in theater-style seating is a fantastic idea. For the average homeowner who is just watching movies on a flat screen television in his own living room, however, theater-style seating presents a few major problems.
Let’s say you are a guy who just bought a great television and you want to do theater-style seating so that you can sit back and watch movies just like in an actual theater. That sounds great. But what about when you’re just watching regular TV and you want to lie down?
With theater-style chairs, you are always sitting upright, which is fine for some people. But if you ever like to lounge on your couch or lay down at all, then theater seating makes that impossible. In most cases, you just don’t want to completely eliminate the ability to ever lay down on a couch or sideways, because that somewhat limits the comfort factor within your home whether you are alone or with guests.
With that said, there are people who weigh the pros and cons and decide they still want to go ahead with buying theater seating for their living room or den, even though it’s really uncommon. I would say about 15% of the homes I work in have a dedicated theater room just for movie-watching purposes—with a projection screen and everything else—and these rooms do usually feature theater-style seating.
There are a number of things that you can do with theater-type chairs—everything from basic chairs all the way up to the very extravagant setups. I experimented once in my own home with a theater-style setup in my living room. Although I already had a straight three-cushion couch, my original idea was to build a raised box area behind the couch and install theater seating there.
Unfortunately, I never got around to doing that. But I could see that as a possibility in homes where there isn’t a dedicated theater room, but the homeowner still wants to have more of a movie-theater feel. I just couldn’t see too many housewives going for a project like that, mainly because a lot of women might think something like a raised box area would look a little tacky.
If theater-style seating is something that you are sure you want to try, then it’s a good idea to know how much a project like this is going to cost. Depending on the materials, I would say getting theater seats set up will cost around $500 to $1,200 per seat, in most cases.
For that price, you could expect to get a seat that comes with a cup holder on both sides and reclines. There are tons of things that you can add on or include in your seat design, such as extra fabrics or lights. They have even theater seats that can fit your back, such as arched seats or flat seats, and they even sell a few loveseat versions of theater seats (although those will probably be a bit more expensive).
People who want to go all out on their theater seats can even get seats with coolers inserted in between the chairs. Companies sell seats with coolers you can be put in the space in between two seats—I mean there are hundreds of ways they can customize these seats to meet any specifications. But the real question that you have to ask yourself is whether you have any room in your home to install these seats, anyway.
