# Tiered Seating for Starters



## pnthrzrule

I plan on turning a my basement into a home theater. I am very low on expendable income so this will be a slow build lasting around 3 to 5 years. 

My question is...are there any risks to starting with a stadium seating platform and then slowly adding more pieces?


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## ALMFamily

pnthrzrule said:


> I plan on turning a my basement into a home theater. I am very low on expendable income so this will be a slow build lasting around 3 to 5 years.
> 
> My question is...are there any risks to starting with a stadium seating platform and then slowly adding more pieces?


Welcome to HTS! :wave:

Just so I understand your question correctly, do you mean building a riser for a second row of seating? If so, I do not think there are any risks doing so. You could use the riser for seats and have people sit on the floor in front of it until you have the means to add more seats.

You could even use bean bag chairs for that front row in the interim - a few people have gone that route too...


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## RSH

Make sure that the depth of the platform you would build for the second row can accommodate home theater recliners. For the straight sets you would need minimum of 6-7 foot depth, and at least one more foot if you plan to do curved sets.


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## pnthrzrule

Yes I mean a riser for the 2nd row. Thanks for the tips everyone. 

Also, I failed to mention that I've got just under 7 feet of clearance floor to ceiling. I will post some pics soon to show the room. I just don't wanna have to redo risers or run into headroom problems etc.


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## RSH

Riser height needs to be calculated, and it would be based on the following parameters:

1. distance from the screen to the front row viewers (eye level)
2. distance from the screen to the second row viewers (eye level)
3. distance from the floor to the bottom screen viewing area.


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## mcascio

Perhaps before you get started doing anything, you should try to come up with the overall game plan for the entire room. That way you don't end up rebuilding anything.

Plan for speaker & projector placement, types of seating & sizes, screen size, etc.


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## zebracatzebra

I too have a 7 foot ceiling in our basement theater and recently built a second row riser. The riser height calculator determined that I needed a 12" riser however that was too tall, so I ended up using 2x8's with 2 layers of 7/16th OSB and it is the perfect height for us. I also moved the screen up closer to the ceiling so there are any problems seeing the bottom of it now from the back row.

As mentioned, make sure it is 6-7' long if your chairs recline, I went with 6 1/2 feet.


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