The arrangements, compared
Capacities below are the seats these particular starting templates open at, counted from the template data rather than typed — the presenter’s lectern, the teacher desk and the speakers’ table are excluded, since those are not delegate seats. Treat them as a like-for-like comparison on one canvas, not as the capacity of your room.
| Arrangement | Also called | Seats | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Theatre style | auditorium style | 84 | Keynotes, briefings, AGMs — anything where nobody needs to write or talk to each other. |
| Classroom style | schoolroom style | 24 | Training, exams and note-taking. The same rows as theatre style, but with a table in front of every chair. |
| Cabaret | crescent rounds | 36 | Conference dinners and workshop days — group discussion without losing sight of the stage. |
| Banquet rounds | full rounds | 60 | Galas, awards nights and weddings. Maximum conversation, minimum sightline to a stage. |
| U-shape | horseshoe | 22 | Seminars, board sessions and workshops where everyone must see everyone else's face. |
| Pods | clusters, groups | 30 | Group work and project sessions. Fast collaboration, poor sightlines to the front. |
| Boardroom | conference style | no preset | Committee meetings and interviews under about 20 people. |
| Hollow square | open square | no preset | Negotiations and large committees where there is no front of the room. |
| Chevron | herringbone, V-shape | no preset | Long training rooms where the back rows of a straight grid lose the screen. |
The spread in that column is the single most useful fact about seating arrangements. On the same canvas, theatre style takes 84 people and u-shape takes 22 — 3.8× — and nothing about the floor changed. Every conversation that starts “will they fit in the small room?” is really a question about which layout you are willing to accept, because the layout moves capacity further than any room booking will.
Facing front: theatre and classroom
Theatre style is chairs in rows with no tables, and it exists to fit people in. Nobody can write, nobody can spread out a handout, and nobody can talk to anyone except the person beside them — which is exactly right for a forty-minute keynote and exactly wrong for a workshop. Rows are usually curved slightly or offset so that people see between the heads in front rather than over them.
Classroom style is the same rows with a table in front of every chair. It costs roughly half the capacity and buys the ability to write, use a laptop and put a drink down, which is why training rooms use it and conference halls do not. The trade is that simple, and it is the reason venues quote two different numbers for the same room.
Facing each other: U-shape, hollow square and boardroom
These three are the same idea at three sizes. A U-shape keeps one end open so a facilitator can walk into the middle and everyone still sees a screen; a hollow square closes it, which suits a negotiation where there is no front of the room; a boardroom table is the solid version for a group small enough to sit round one table. All three cap out fast — the open middle is expensive floor area, and past about twenty-five people the far arms can no longer hear each other.
Facing a table: banquet rounds, cabaret and pods
Round tables are for talking and eating. Full banquet rounds seat people all the way around, which is right for dinner and awkward for a speech, because part of every table has its back to the stage. Cabaret solves that by leaving the stage-side arc empty — a ten-seat round becomes a six-seat one, everyone faces front, and the room’s capacity drops accordingly. Pods are the same instinct with small tables: fast group work, poor sightlines, and the layout most likely to need rearranging halfway through a day.
Getting from a layout to a named plan
Choosing the arrangement is the first half. The second is putting names in the seats, which is where the same decision stops being about furniture and starts being about people. Once you have picked a shape here, the seating chart maker takes your guest or delegate list, seats it, and exports a chart. For a hall booking the seating plan template and table plan template pages start from the finished-document end instead, and the restaurant seating chart covers a dining room, where the arrangement is fixed and the mix of table sizes is the real decision.