Project Planning Guide

Every project requires attention to detail. This is true for smaller home theater or media room projects as it is for large commercial projects. Lose sight for a moment, and you could have a costly mistake. This Project Planning Guide is written with commercial or public fixed audience seating projects in mind, but it is also applicable to the smaller project as well. Let Booth Seating assist you in making sure your project goes smoothly from start to finish.

Having been in business since 1968 with numerous seating projects under our belt, we have substantial experience with fixed audience seating and project management.  Put our decades of experience to work for you.

1.  Planning  

• Have a vision or a direction for your venue.  The type of chair you will need - fixed-back, theater rocker, or one of our luxury VIP Plus chairs - can be influenced by the type of venue it will be used in.  Arenas, auditoriums, and churches will typically use a fixed-back chair such as our Convention theater chair or the Alessandria Convention chair for their fixed audience seating.  Theaters and cinemas will frequently use one of our theater rockers while a high-end theater and many home theaters will want one of our plush and stylish VIP Plus theater chairs like the Alessandria Plus or the Angela Plus.  The most important thing is that you choose the right theater chair for your project.  Not only should it provide the proper aesthetics, it should also provide years of worry-free operation and comfort.

• Have a rough idea of the quantity of seats you will need for your venue.  This will impact not only the type of chair you may use but will also impact the chair width and possibly the row spacing between the chairs.

• If you are working with a designer or architect, have them contact Booth Seating early in the planning stage so we can get an early understanding of your design goals, lend our expertise to the process, and help avoid early mistakes.  Advance planning can be very important in avoiding problems later on.

•  Determine critical project timelines in advance.  Know if our seating installers will need to coordinate with other trades.  Know when the project must be completed.  Having this information will help us set a manufacturing start date, a shipping date, and a date to start the installation process.  Again, getting Booth Seating involved early in the process can save you time and problems as the project progresses.

2.  Design  

• Work with Booth Seating to determine which theater seat model and what options will best suit your venue.  Will you want a cup holder on the chair, seat numbers, or aisle lights?  Do you need a tablet arm for note taking or for a computer?  Does your facility have special needs such as extra space between rows to accommodate clients will walkers?

• Provide Booth Seating with DWG drawings of your floor plan so we can get an early start on creating a seating plan for you.  Often, several iterations are required, so it is important to allow enough time for this process.  The creation of a seating plan is very important in that it is the basis for manufacturing, it shows critical dimensions which the installer will use as the basis for installation, and it provides the information needed to verify code and ADA compliance.

• Choose a fabric.  While most mills are sufficiently stocked with fabric, larger orders can deplete available stock causing an unexpected delay in manufacturing.  An early decision on fabric pattern and color can help us coordinate with the mill to avoid costly delays.

• Once the chair, chair options, and fabric are chosen and the seating plan is approved, it's time to move to the final stage.