Church seating capacity calculator
Work out how many seats your sanctuary really has, and when it starts to feel full · free, nothing to sign up for
Your room
About 35 more people before the room starts to feel full.
This counts seats, not the legal limit. The maximum number of people allowed in your building is set by your local fire marshal and posted on site. Use that for safety, never this.
How to measure
- Chairs: count one section's rows and the chairs in one row. If sections differ, work each one out and add the rest under "Other seats".
- Pews: measure a few pews along the seat, from the inside of one end to the inside of the other, and use the average.
- Seats you don't use: take out anything people can't sit in on a normal Sunday: reserved rows, a roped-off section, the sound desk, broken chairs.
Why 80%?
A rule of thumb you'll find in a lot of church-growth writing: once a room is about 80% full, it feels full. Newcomers struggle to find seats together, families get split up, and some people stop coming to that service. It's a guide, not a law. Watch your own room on a busy Sunday.
If you're regularly above it, the usual answers are another service, opening a closed section or balcony, or asking regulars to sit toward the middle of the rows.
To get the attendance number right, see how to count church attendance.
How PewPin does this
PewPin draws your real room, seat by seat, and works out how full it was for every service from the seats ushers tap. Blocked seats don't count toward full, so the number is always against the seats you can actually use.
Counting and the last four weeks of reports are free, with no time limit.
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