Building a new movie room... with 3 rows of seating.

Note: Right now I am a beginner to actually setting up a dedicated system I just watch lots of Youtube in the hopes I can have a great system someday. So I apologize in advance if I'm asking an extremely novice question or should be asking somewhere else.


TL;DR look at my attached movie room plan, and tell me what I'm doing wrong

I (hopefully) sooner rather than later will be remodeling my garage space. The previous owners already made the garage into a family room and two sort of bonus/storage areas. Our planned remodel will convert one of those bonus storage areas into a bathroom, and also create a sort of hallway that opens up into a library play area for our future kids.

That leaves me with a big rectangle. And if I'm left with a big rectangle, then I want a dedicated movie room.

The room will be just over 28' front to back, 10.5' across, and juuust under 8' high.

I want to build a wall to create an AV/Networking closet like Superdave does in his YouTube tour, and I arbitrarily chose 5' into the room. That gives me plenty of room to walk around yet store all my equipment in there as well.

Ok so now I'm left with 23' x 10.5' x 8' or just shy of 2,000 cubic feet.


My plan is to center a 75" 4k TV on that wall that separates the room from the media cabinet, that should leave just enough room for two "large" subs and two towers at the front of the room... ok fine, relatively standard stuff.

I have to align my each of my 3 person w/fold down table sofas (86") to the right to allow for 3 feet clearance on the left... non negotiable for everyone in my family to be... comfortable getting to their seat. So only the left most seat is centered. not a problem, that's my seat! And the front row is about 8 feet from the TV.


I'm planning on a 7.2 layout with potential to upgrade to Atmos later.

I was thinking Bipoles for the side surrounds if I can get one that gives a good bang for the buck, mounting to the wall, and bookself speakers for the surround back channels mounted to the back wall.

My problem is where to put the side surrounds. My wife and I will do 80-90% of all film watching in there. so I figured make the front row the sweet spot. but can I get a decent area effect with surrounds that are farther back than Dolby's recommendation?

I've attached a PDF of my proposed layout that I did in excel. I'm pretty sure everything is to scale. every square is 6", and I wanted to leave plenty of walking space between rows.


ALSO. IF you have other ideas for how I could make the layout better I'm willing to hear them. Thanks!