Chair Layout Part 1 - How To Design A Layout To Fit Your Event Space

Designing an Optimal Chair Layout:

The most important part of the chair layout is not the chairs themselves - it is the aisles. If the aisles are not planned properly, your guests will spend a lot of time waiting to get into their seats, delaying the start of the performance. Safety is always important, so the access aisles should also allow your guests to get out of the room quickly.

Row Aisles:

When planning the layout for an audience, it is important to allow enough room between rows of chairs for guests to enter and exit the rows before and after a lecture or performance. The absolute minimum is eighteen inches. Any less than this and you could have major problems with moving the audience in and out of the space in a timely fashion. The amount of chairs in the row should be no more than fifteen. Your guests in the center of the row will then have to walk only ten or twelve feet to get out of the row.

Middle Aisles: Center Aisles, Side Aisles & Lateral Aisles

The other place to pay attention to aisle space is between blocks of chairs. This can depend on where the exit doors are in a building. You want to construct a straight line with the access aisles (between the blocks of chairs) and the exit doors to facilitate traffic flow.

Perimeter Aisles:

If you cannot line the middle aisles up with the exit doors, the perimeter aisles that allow access to the exit doors should be wider than the middle aisles that run between the blocks of chairs. The maximum size aisle here is figured by adding the widths of all the exits together that the particular aisle leads to. The aisle width should not exceed this. This will allow for a constant flow of people out of the room because it will minimize in-room bottlenecks.

Ample space should be left in the front perimeter aisle (where a stage would normally be located). this aisle width can vary from four to twelve feet, depending on the size of your audience, audio/video/lighting placement, decorations, and security requirements.

Figuring out how many chairs you can fit in a room:

The general rule of thumb for standard chair installations is eight square feet per chair. For example, an 800 square foot room (or a 20 x 40 Tent) should fit 100 chairs – this includes aisle spacing. Anything else that needs to be in the room will reduce the chair count, so any stages, audio/video, band, registration tables, or anything that takes up floor space will have to be figured for square footage and then subtracted from the room's total square feet before figuring the amount of seats that will fit.

The rule of thumb assumes chairs will be set up in rectangular blocks that are parallel to the rectangular room. If the chair layout is diagonal to the room's walls, as much as 20% loss of chair capacity can result. So, to maximize room capacity, keep all the chairs going in the same direction as the walls (in a standard rectangular room).

Have a professional figure it out for you. Many rental companies can put together a CAD drawing for you. If you are renting your event equipment, have your rental company visit your site and measure it out. They will then use those measurements to make a drawing on their computer that can be faxed or emailed to you. Most companies provide this service for no charge if you are a client.

Mark Saponaro Email me

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