Dimensions for Stage and Riser

The riser has to fit whatever seating you are going to place on it, with room to spare for walking and room for fully reclining the chairs (if you have that kind of seating). Otherwise, it is based on size of the room and your desires.

We normally talk about 6 feet for the nominal length of the riser, and typically the width of the room.

The stage is a matter of preference and possibly to help with putting the speakers up higher. Some rooms have stages and others don't. That is a lot of the personality of a dedicated theater room.

I have never seen any formulas for determining sizes of either one. But there is (as you probably have seen) a riser height thread and formula.

Ken

Neither the riser nor the stage HAS to be the width of the room, I happen to have an aisle down the side of my room and the riser is to the right as you enter the room.

You need to know the screen you are using the size and where it will be mounted, you can then determine the height you need for the riser. the length of it will be determined by the style and size of seating you are planning to use. I have regular movies seating and my riser is 15" high and 58" deep it is 12 feet wide my room is 15.5 feet wide.

We did 10" height for the stage, and 12" for the riser. With an 8 foot ceiling, in retrospect, I would have done 8" for the stage, and 10" for the riser.

Personally, I prefer the look of a riser and stage that are the full width of the room.

Kelly

My stage wasn't nearly high enough at 4". It's not bad, just could have been a few inches taller. My rear riser is 10" and I wish I would have made it 12+.
When the front seats are reclined it's alright but the front row is barely in the way in the non reclined position. Oh well, I don't sit in the back.


I agree, but my room was only 10 6 so that was a no brainer. If your room was 30' wide that might be a different story.

The ideal rear riser for the large berkline recliners is 9-10 ft.

7 ft for the chair so that you are not resting your feet on the people in front of you. 2-3 ft for some distance to the rear wall behind the chair so that you are not sitting right in front of a rear surround speaker.

Interesting. I am using two sofas for the rear seating and I figured I needed a riser that is 16" high and 7' 6" deep, but I am not using rear speakers at all. The backs of the sofas will be 3" from the back wall, just enough to allow them to recline.

I have a question about the riser calculator at:

http://www.theater-calc.com/

Why is the default setting 42" for front row head height and just 36" for the rear row head height? Is this because they figure children will be in the back rows? If I punch in 42" for the rear seats, the height of the needed riser goes down to about 12". To be safe, I thought I would use 16" with an 8" tall step that is 12" deep going up to the riser. I hope and assume with only one step and a 16" height, I do not need a railing to pass code. Is that right?

My theater will be 16' 6" wide by 25' 6" deep with a 123" diagonal, 107" wide screen that is 23.75" from the floor. I want front eyeballs at 16' and rear eyeballs will be way back at 24' or so. I do not want to force the front row sofa closer as that will be the only seating needed 90% of the time.

IB

I think that you are going to find that you will want to sit a bit closer to that size screen for 2:35 material.

Don't tease. Give me a number in feet!

IB

When watching 235 material I find between 1 and 1.25 the screen width is perfect. In your case that would equate out to between 9 and 11' away. I definitely agree with BIG that 16 is too far away, especially on 235 material. If you do a lot of mixed viewing (I didn't catch if you were using an anamorphic lens), 11' would give a nice compromise between 178 and 235. YMMV

I sit 11 ft from 100 inch diag (16:9) and I think 2:35 material is too small. I'm planning on switching out to the same height but a 2:35 screen in my next upgrade.

That will give me a screen of about 115 wide at 11 ft. (1.15 screen width)
You said you have 107 wide at 16 ft. (1.79 screen width)

I just do not like to sit that close to a screen. I have a 51" RPTV in my living room and I sit at least 12' away from that. But I will increase the riser width/depth to 8.5', which will move front row eyeballs up a foot. I figure about to about 14' 5" from the 107" wide screen screen.

How does my riser height of 16" sound to you guys? Will two 8" steps without a rail pass code? I want to run the steps across the entire width of the room.

IB

Large screen TV watching in a living room isn't the same as immerse Theater viewing. Just a warning. Take some masking tape and mock up the exact size of screen on the wall.

Go sit at your seating locations and notice how much of your field of view the screen occupies. Take a ruler and hold it at your maximum arms length and measure the width of the screen.

Then run down to your local theater and sit where you usually like to sit, take out the ruler and take a measurement.

The cost of the ticket will be money well spent.

I agree about distance to screen that is pretty far back for that size screen, ours are 9.5' and 12.5' back from a 120wide by 51 high Smx 2.35:1 screen and it is great. Now obviously it is individual prefference but I think you will find that seating too far back for a screen that size. If you haven't already, do try to do some mock ups and test it out with the real thing try your distances and closer ones.
by the way my projector is an optoma H77 720p and the picture is fine no SDE visible even at 9.5 feet

My stage is just about 3.5-feet deep. 2 feet of that is behind the false wall. I would not recommend less than 24" behind the false wall if you are putting speakers back there. If I had to do it over again I would probably build the stage even deeper for more room both behind and in front of the false wall.

My riser is has an aisle down the side as well and is a little over 8' deep. This gives approx 6' of room for the berkline recliners and 2' behind to the wall. Again if I had more room I would leave more room between the recliners and the wall, but it works well like i built it. 6' for the recliners leaves just enough room for someone to squeeze by when reclined, but 7' would be better.

My stage and riser are both 10" high with a 5" step. The riser really should be a little taller, but the rear row can just see over the front heads and works out ok.

My viewing distances are 13.5 front row and 19.5 rear on a 120"x51" SMX screen. For most SD material I like the back row although the front is ok. For high quality SD material (like the starwars disks) both rows are fine. HD rocks from both rows!

I have autocad plans of my stage and riser if you need them. Really helped in curving thr front of the stage.