Bookshelf vs tower (floorstanding) speakers — which should I pick?

Room first, preference second. In a compact Indian living room I would usually put the money into bookshelves plus a good subwoofer; in a large open-plan space, towers earn their footprint.

The reasoning is not mysterious. A tower has more driver area and more cabinet volume, so it moves more air with less strain and reaches lower on its own. In a big room, at a listening distance of four metres or more, that headroom is what stops the sound from getting thin and congested when the volume goes up. Bookshelves in that room are working near their excursion limits every time an action scene starts, and you hear it as compression.

Flip the room and the picture changes. In a 12 by 14 foot room, at two and a half to three metres, a decent bookshelf pair images beautifully, places easily on stands or a console, and with a properly integrated sub gives up surprisingly little. The sub handles everything below the crossover, usually 80 Hz, so the bookshelf only has to be good from there upwards, which is a much easier brief. Towers in that room often sit too close to the wall, the bass thickens, and you end up EQing out what you paid extra for. Physics does not care that the tower looked more impressive in the showroom.

Two conditions worth naming. First, bookshelf plus sub only wins if the sub is decent and placed properly; a tiny sub on a marble floor in a corner is not the plan. Second, if you listen mainly to music at moderate levels and dislike subwoofers on principle, a modest tower pair is a fair compromise even in a mid-sized room.

Whichever route, stay within one speaker series. Same-series speakers voice-match, so you can start with bookshelves and a sub, add the matching centre and surrounds later, and it will not sound stitched together. Tell us the room dimensions, the seating distance and whether it is movies or music first, and I will tell you which side of the line your room sits on. Do not buy the towers first and measure the room second.