Home theater design help

The best advice I can give is to read Premium Home Theater by Earl Geddes. It’s by far the best book I’ve read on room construction and acoustics because it explains theory in an approachable way and then covers in detail how to construct a room and even what materials are best to use. Even if you're hiring someone to design and build a room for you, I'd highly recommend reading this book so you have a working knowledge of what they're proposing.  I’m not handy at all, but if I had the time I think even I could build a great sounding room using only this book, so any contractor should have no problem. No expert design needed. Here’s the link, and best of luck...

https://www.amazon.com/Premium-Home-Theater-Design-Construction/dp/B0041SUL2E

I'm currently on my third home theater room, having moved twice and been at this for about 17 years.  The one piece of advice I can give you anecdotally is that oddly shaped rooms tend to sound better.  My current room is L-shaped, and seems to have magically resolved the acoustical issues that my former rectangular box-rooms created.  This with very little acoustic treatment, just one 2'x4' absorptive side wall panel and a panel behind.  The installer confirmed that has been his experience too - the non-box shape solves a lot of problems.

Agreed.  Another thing to avoid is rooms that are nearly square shaped.  You really do not want a perfectly square room.  If you cannot do an "L" shaped room, make sure the room is longer than it is wide.  In other words, home theater works better if you put the screen and front speakers on the small wall.

Thanks for the responses.  I’m actually debating how to shape the room there are a few options.  If a perfect rectangle the room would be 16x 33. However there are bay window cutouts at each end so in the middle it’s about 36 long. As well on half of the room gets 5 feet wider for about 16 feet but there is a support pole at the 16 ft width mark. I had considered walking off this space to make an equipment and media storage space but that put me back in rectangle land which many have advised against. Another option I weighed as putting wall in front of the bay window cutout and putting equipment behind there so a projection screen and flat screen would have a flat wall behind. I’d like to try to isolate the room to some degree (room within a room kind of thing) but I have people telling me this could run 50k or more which seems crazy as in some parts of the country you can build a house for that. I’m thinking I’m likely going to have to design most of this myself and then find a contractor who at least understands this a little as I want a full electrical panel with numerous 20 amp outlets, conduit for wires in case I need to make changes, etc. the target is a hybrid theater/2 channel/ entertainment space and I can’t go full on black walls black ceiling so I’ve been trying to find online examples to get ideas with moderate success. Any continued thoughts appreciated.