If you recently bought a new TV, awesome! If you're planning to mount it on the wall, move it to a new room or replace an older, smaller TV, make sure you avoid the mistakes outlined below. Poor placement can hurt image quality, make the TV harder to see or — worse — turn into a literal pain in the neck. Whether you wall-mount it or use a stand, there are important, and often unintuitive, factors to consider. For example, you don't want to mount your TV too high, too far away or at an awkward angle.
Is this hyperbole? Not really. Consider that theย Occupational Safety and Health Administration has standards for how your work environment is set up to minimize the chance of repetitive stress injuries. If you're watching four to six hours of TV a day, it's possible you could be susceptible to many of the same issues. Plus, most TVs look noticeably worse off axis — that is, when viewed from too high, too low or too far to the side. If you're not watching from the optimal angle, you could be undermining all that money you spent.
Mounting a TV above a fireplaceย is also a bad idea, as is in a bathroom. A slight seating shuffle, or adjusting your preferred pedestal placements, could yield better picture quality or allow for a larger TV. So before you mount a TV or buy an expensive TV stand, consider these dos and don'ts for TV placement.
Do these five things before you set up a new TV
Nice couches make a pretty good TV placement look even better. This TV is at a good height but is too small for the room/distance.
Check TV heightย
There's no set height for TV placement, but ideally, you don't want the TV to be too high. Staring up at a TV is like sitting in the front row of a movie theater. It's not ideal, not comfortable and not conducive to long viewing sessions. Generally speaking, you want the center of the…