How long should poker blind levels be?
Fifteen to twenty minutes for a home tournament you want to finish in three to four hours. Shorter levels end the game faster but turn it into a coin flip; longer levels reward play but risk a game still running at two in the morning.
Work backwards from when you want to finish. The total number of levels you can fit is the deciding constraint, and the blind structure has to reach a level where the remaining stacks are small relative to the blinds by roughly that point.
Doubling the blinds every level is too aggressive for a home game. A rise of about 50% per level keeps the game playable for longer and is the difference between a tournament that ends and one that gets abandoned.
For a cash game none of this applies — the blinds stay fixed all night. The question only arises for tournaments, which is worth saying because the two get discussed as though they were the same format.
The full answer
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