How high should you mount your TV?

The center of the picture should sit at your eye level when you are seated. Everything else follows from that. Enter your screen size and eye height below.

Common combinations

Floor to the bottom edge of the picture, in inches.

Why eye level

A screen mounted above eye level makes you tilt your head back, and the strain shows up after twenty minutes rather than immediately. The usual mistake is mounting to suit the wall rather than the sofa: a TV centered over a fireplace commonly ends up 20 to 25 inches higher than it should be.

If the wall gives you no choice, a tilting mount angling the screen down 5 to 15 degrees reduces the strain. It reduces it; it does not remove it.

Turning that into a mark on the wall

The numbers above describe where the picture should sit. The holes you drill are somewhere else entirely, and how far off depends on your TV and your mount. One measurement bridges the two, and it is the one nobody thinks to take.

1. Lay the TV face down on a blanket or the carpet, and bolt the mount's arms to the back of it first.
2. Measure from the bottom edge of the screen to the point the TV will hang from — the hook or lip on the arms that catches the wall plate. Call that number D. On a typical set it lands somewhere between 4 and 12 inches, which is why guessing it goes wrong.
3. Add D to the bottom-edge height. That total is where the top of the wall plate goes, because the hook sits at the same height as the plate it catches. Worked example, fixed so it stays true whatever you type above: a 65″ screen at 42″ eye height puts the bottom edge at 26.1″, so a D of 6″ puts the plate at 32.1″ from the floor.
4. Find the studs before you commit. The height is yours to choose; the horizontal position is not. Most wall plates are wide enough to reach two studs at 16″ centers, so slide the plate sideways, never up or down, to hit them.
5. Mark, level, then drill. Draw the line at your height, check it with a level across the full width of the plate, and measure from the finished floor rather than from a baseboard or a rug edge.

Two things forgive small errors. Most wall plates have slotted holes giving roughly half an inch of play once the bolts are in, and most arms let the TV lift off and re-seat a notch higher or lower. Your mount's own instructions and its paper template are the authority over anything on this page.

Once you know the height, find which mount fits your TV — we list the VESA pattern, panel weight and screw size for every model we cover.