Whether you are winding down in your bedroom watching a great movie after a long day at work with a cool drink to hand, or you are taking in the morning news in bed while sipping on your first cup of coffee, watching TV in the privacy of your bedroom is one of life’s great pleasures.
There is no universal ideal height at which to mount your TV. TV’s come in a variety of sizes. Your eye level while watching TV should determine the ideal height for your TV. When you are sitting on your bed or on a chair, you should make sure that the middle of your TV is mounted at your eye level.
All too often though, your television set will be mounted in a place that forces you into a head-up or, even worse, a head-down position. So what is ideal? Where is the television set best mounted to prevent neck or back strain?
Choose the Right TV for Your Bedroom
Most people will first think about choosing the biggest TV they can afford to put in their bedroom. After all, a bigger set ensures a more immersive experience, doesn’t it? You feel as though you are right in there taking part in the action or chatting to a life-size news anchor right there in your bedroom.
Certainly, the larger the set, the more it intrudes, and that is not necessarily a good thing. An overly large TV set can have a somewhat negative impact on your TV viewing experience. So, before you choose which set to buy, consider where exactly in your bedroom you want to mount it.
Do you plan to use it as an entertainment center for computer games, for surfing YouTube, or merely as a receiver for cable television programs, or all three?
Do you plan to mount it on the wall or set it on a purpose-built television unit? These things will all have a bearing on just how high you should mount it.
Calculate the Viewing Distance
The Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE), an internationally recognized standards organization, recommend that different TV sizes have set viewing distance standards.
They state that you can easily calculate the correct viewing distance from your screen, and thus the right screen size for the space that you have, by measuring the distance between the tv and your preferred viewing position. The correct sized TV for your bedroom should fill around 30 degrees of your field of vision.
The simple calculation for most TVs is as follows: Multiply the sitting distance by 0.625 to arrive at the maximum screen size for your room. So if you will be seated 10 feet away from your screen (120 inches) then the maximum recommended screen size is 75 inches. Which is a pretty huge television set and sufficient to immerse yourself in the Raiders of the Lost Ark action on the screen to the extent that your wife will soon start calling you Indy. If you are watching baseball, however, “Babe” might just be a term of endearment.
It should be remembered here that television set manufacturers, Sony, LG, Samsung, and all the rest, in order to make it seem that their products were larger than they actually were, started to measure the screen from corner to corner, diagonally across the screen.
However, this method of measuring television sets – a somewhat underhand method, as I’m sure you will agree – is the current industry standard, so the 0.625 factor applies in this instance.
You will note that a 65-inch television is usually around 32 inches tall. The vertical measurement of your set will have a bearing on just how high you should mount it off the floor.
Having said all that, we should also make mention of the fact that modern television sets offer a much higher resolution than in earlier years. With the improvement in technology, you can find television sets that can increase the recommended size calculation to a factor of around 0.725.
Generally speaking, the bigger the screen, the better the resolution. For screens of around 32 inches, we would advise having a pixel count of no less than 720p.
720p, also known as HD (High Definition) is a display resolution measuring 1280 x 720 pixels. Resolution is essentially how many pixels a display has in both width and height. 720p is not considered particularly sharp so it is best reserved for smaller sets.
A display with a screen resolution of 1920 x 1080 is usually called 1080p or Full HD. 4K at 4096 x 2160 pixels or UHD (Ultra High Definition) with 3840 x 2160, and now even 5K at 5120 x 2880 pixels, is the standard these days and you may struggle to find a TV set in one of the older formats.
In essence, the more pixels there are on the screen, the sharper, or more defined, its image quality will be, and the closer you can position yourself to the screen without compromising the image quality.
How High Off the Bedroom Floor Should the TV Be?
Once you have determined how far you will be seated from your set and you have calculated the maximum size, you should be thinking about buying the correct sized set (and let’s admit it here, you are going to go out and buy the biggest TV set you possibly can for the space; maybe even a little over the recommended size… well, we’re guys, right?).
Generally speaking, you want your set to be mounted, or placed upon a purpose-built television stand so that when you are seated on a chair in your bedroom or sitting up in bed, the center of the TV should be at your eye level.
This diagram applies to a seated position where the common height off the floor for most chairs is around 18 inches.
A 40-inch set should be mounted about 42 inches from the floor to the center of the screen.
A 55 inch TV should be mounted around 61 inches from the floor to the center of the screen.
A 65-inch set should be placed at around 66 inches from floor to screen center.
A 70 inch TV set should be mounted at around 68 inches from the floor to the middle of the screen.
These preferences will vary greatly from person to person. Your height and that of your partner should also play a role in deciding on the perfect height to mount the set. You may be significantly taller than your wife or partner and, while she will most probably wish to leave you to watch your Monday Night Football on your own, she may want to watch the aforementioned Harrison Ford with you as he swash-buckles his way from the Jungles of Mexico to the mountains of Tibet to the deserts of Egypt. If the set is mounted to your eye level she is going to find the experience a little less than comfortable.
Your bed will also place you at a different height above the floor than your couch or the chair in your bedroom. As mentioned the average chair or sofa will position you around 18 inches off floor level. The average bed, however, will place you much higher than that although this is mitigated by the fact that most people will be, at best reclining in bed or indeed, lying down.
So if you feel that most of your tv watching in the bedroom will be from your bed height, then adjust the figures above to take into consideration the greater height your bed will place you from the floor.
The Best Places to Mount the TV in Your Bedroom
You can mount your TV set anywhere you want frankly. If you feel the need to install a 75 inch 4K High-Definition Smart TV with internet connectivity and Amazon Alexa compatibility to the ceiling of your downstairs toilet then you may do exactly that.
There is, as far as we are concerned, only one TV mounting aberration that we will advise you to avoid, at all costs; and that is the early flatscreen trend of mounting the TV to an adjustable arm, which is, in turn, mounted onto a bracket somewhere up near the ceiling. This might be ok for a person reclining in bed while watching his favorite show but it is a neck achingly poor position for normal viewing.
It seems that this particular method of mounting the set was compulsory for most of the hotels and motels in the early 2000s. Perhaps it was safer to have the TV placed up there near the ceiling out of the way of the more rambunctious guests, but in our view, any hotel that did this should be severely punished with immediate demolition for their crimes against humanity.
Do not place your set above the fireplace. Heat and television sets are not compatible and the heat usually wins the battle.
The only other mistake people tend to make when mounting a TV is to think that it should be hung high up on the wall like a painting. This was perhaps forgivable when flat screens were introduced because they certainly looked like a picture you could hang on the wall. These days though this is not quite as acceptable and anyone who does this should be told in no uncertain terms to take it down.
Other Factors to Consider When Mounting a TV
Do you have a spot to place your other TV components?
Invariably you will have all sorts of other devices attached to your TV. Your cable box, your Playstation (or Xbox), and possibly even a DVD player will have to find a home somewhere near your set.
If you have mounted your TV on the wall by means of a bracket then you are going to have to consider placing a small cabinet under the TV to house all of these peripheral appliances.
How are you going to conceal all the cords?
TV’s game consols and all other electrical appliances come with power cords to connect them to the power outlet and all sorts of other cables and cords to connect them to each other.
This can result in an untidy mess hanging off the back of your TV and cascading down your wall like some electronic waterfall.
If you cannot hide them by chasing them into the wall then your next best option will be to choose a cord cover kit that will neatly encase the cords so they won’t unduly affect the serenity of your bedroom.
A specially designed TV cabinet will ensure that all your appliances and the attendant cords and cables are properly stowed away.
Is your wall strong enough?
Especially when you consider the size and weight of a modern 4K television set. You should give some serious thought to not using drywall anchors for mounting a heavy TV set; they are simply not strong enough to support the weight.
There is probably not much more disconcerting than awakening in the middle of the night to a loud crash as your expensive 5K hits the floor. The thought of the consequent financial outlay will usually follow close on the heels of the shock of being rudely awakened by the bang of your TV exploding into small, jagged pieces.
Make sure all the ports are accessible.
If the back of the TV is inaccessible because it has been bolted to a bracket on the wall then you may have a problem inserting USB ports and HDMI cables into the back of the TV.
What is the viewing angle?
Try to mount the TV on a wall or set it atop a TV cabinet directly in front of where you will be doing most of your TV watching.
Most modern TVs have a decent viewing angle but even then, if placed too far off perpendicular to where you will be sitting, LCD (Liquid Crystal Display) screens are notorious for being difficult to see from an angle of more than 30 degrees. The greater the angle, the worse the quality of the picture, and the screen will not be as bright and sharp.
Conclusion
There are plenty of factors to consider but it would seem that there is no perfect height to mount a TV set.
While the television set itself will have exact measurements, and you can thus apply a formula to those measurements to determine a suitable average, we ourselves are not of uniform height and we do not watch TV in the same posture or position as everyone else making this a very difficult exercise indeed.
The best you can hope for, after considering everything, is to average out all the variables and arrive at a happy medium.