Just the right fit

A two-hour feature film can seem like eternity in an uncomfortable seat. In that sense, buying properly designed seating for a home theater is more important than getting the right chair for the dining room or office, where you can fidget at will. And home-theater seating doesn’t stop at the chair. Think of it as merely the platform for a galaxy of bells and whistles.

For instance, Home Cinema Accessories offers a trio of trays: an octagonal wooden snack tray that clips onto any chair arm ($30), a plastic tray that fits into an armrest’s cup holder ($27), and a stainless-steel serving tray with an elegant film-strip railing complete with sprocket holes ($195).

Fortress Seating offers embellishments that include a console table with storage compartment; a retractable touch-screen mount and compartments to house gaming devices; a variable massage and heat unit; and hidden compartments such as a flip-top armrest.

There’s also an entire home-theater cottage industry devoted to tactile transducers, which tap into the sound system’s bass output to shake your seat during action sequences. As an option to HTmarket.com’s Motionworks Home Cinema chair, for instance, you can specify the ButtKicker 2 ($399).

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Resource Guide

Bass Industries, www.bassind.com; www.homecinemaaccessories.com; De Sede 255 and 220 chairs, $4,370-$7,320, and glass table, all from Modern Living, Los Angeles, (310) 657-8775; Fortress Seating, (800) 873-2828, www.fortresseating.com; Monroe chair, Innovative Theatres, Santa Monica; South Beach chair, www.SeatsAndChairs.com.

OTHER RESOURCES: Trade associations include Custom Electronic Design & Installation Assn., www.cedia.net; National Systems Contractors Assn., www.nsca.org. Reviews: www.audiorevolution.com. Motorized drapery/window treatments: Solar Shading Systems, (800) 432-7526, www.solarshadingsystems.com. Custom lift and mechanical elevator systems: J & R Engineering, (818) 842-3393.

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Produced by Barbara Thornburg; Styled by Tristam Steinberg