Cinema seat maps for online seat selection

What makes a cinema seating plan easy to book

Online seat selection happens on a phone, in a few seconds, often in the dark of a foyer. A cinema seat map has to make three things obvious: where the screen is, which seats are free, and which row is which. Anything more is noise.

Put the screen at the top and keep it there. Every hall in a multiplex should face the same way on screen, so regulars do not have to reorient themselves when they switch halls.

Split the hall where it is really split. If aisles divide the room into a left, centre and right block, draw them as separate blocks so the gaps show on the map. Buyers looking for an aisle seat can then find one, and a group of six can see where six seats fit together.

Show the seats that matter: premium or recliner rows, wheelchair places with room for a companion, and seats you hold back. In seatorio you give a premium block its own section and category, flag wheelchair and accessible seats with a badge, and mark seats not for sale. The cinema seating plan template has twelve lettered rows in three blocks, a premium centre and wheelchair places at the front.

Row letters and seat numbers that match the tickets

Cinema-goers expect row A at the front and seat 1 on the left as they face the screen. seatorio uses that as the default for cinema plans: rows are lettered from the screen back, seats are numbered left to right, and the label on the ticket reads like "F12".

Your hall may differ, and the map should match what is painted on the seats. You can letter rows from the back instead, start at a different letter, switch to numbers, or number seats from the right. A row with a special name, such as a sofa row at the back, can have its own custom label.

When three blocks share a row letter, decide whether seat numbers run across the whole row or restart in each block. Both work; what matters is that the map and the signage agree. To continue numbers across an aisle, select the seats of a row in the right-hand block and number them from the next value.

Once a hall is on sale, keep its numbering. The seat id that your booking system stores is built from the section, row and number, so renumbering creates new ids. For more on schemes, see the seat numbering guide, written for theatres but true for any lettered hall.

What your booking page gets

seatorio does not sell tickets or show live availability on its own. It gives your booking page the seat map to show. The SVG export makes every seat a clickable element with a stable id, a uuid, its section and a status. Your developer listens for a click, reads the seat id, looks up its row and number in the JSON export, and adds it to the order.

When a seat is sold for a screening, your system sets its status attribute and the seat changes colour. The same map works for every screening of that hall: the drawing stays the same, only the statuses change. The JSON export holds the full plan with categories and accessibility flags for your back office, and it can be imported back into seatorio when the hall is refitted.

The seat map for online booking guide explains the integration in plain steps, from the exported file to a working seat picker. Your developer only needs the SVG, one click listener and your booking system's own API.

Who it is for

Independent cinemas moving from first-come seating to booked seats, where regulars want to pick their favourite place before they leave home. Multiplex operators who want every hall drawn the same way. Open-air and pop-up cinemas that set up rows of chairs for a season. Ticketing and booking software companies who onboard cinemas and need a seat map for each hall. Film festivals that screen in borrowed halls and need a seat map for each venue in a few days. Schools and clubs that run a screening room and want to sell seats for special shows.

Each hall is its own plan, so a cinema with eight screens has eight plans; the Pro plan allows unlimited plans. If you would rather not draw them all, send us the halls and our done-for-you service delivers them with the same numbering throughout. Running a live stage too? See theatre seating charts, drawn with the same tools and numbered the theatre way.

Guides for cinemas

• Cinema seating layout and seat numberingCinema-goers pick a seat on a small screen in a few seconds. A clear layout and predictable numbering make that choice easy, at the counter and online.