Blind structure for home tournaments, What actually works?

One thing I see home game hosts get wrong more than almost anything else is the blind structure. Either it's too slow and you're still playing at 2am, or it's a turbo shove-fest that barely feels like poker. Getting this right makes a huge difference in whether people actually enjoy the tournament.

A few things I've learned running home games over the years:

Starting stack depth matters more than blind levels. You want to start with at least 50-75 big blinds, ideally 100. If people are shoving preflop in level 2, you went too shallow.

Level length sweet spot for a 3-4 hour tournament with 10-15 players is usually 15-20 minute levels. 20 minutes gives enough hands to play real poker. Anything under 15 and you're basically just bingo.

The jump between levels is where most homemade structures go wrong. Doubling every level (25/50 → 50/100 → 100/200) is too aggressive — it punishes shorter stacks too fast. Somewhere between 1.5x and 1.8x is usually better for keeping the game interesting longer.

Late reg cutoff also matters. Letting people buy in through level 4 or 5 creates weird dead money situations and messes with the pacing.

Curious what structures other people are running — especially how many players you're dealing with and how long your games actually run vs. how long you planned for.