TV Mounting Height: How High to Mount a TV for Every Screen Size

How high to mount a TV

Sanus, which makes TV mounts, calls 42 inches from the floor to the center of the screen the optimal viewing height, and Bob Vila gives the same number. It’s about where your eyes are on a sofa: Yamaha measures an average seated eye height of 42.5 inches.

Screen size changes where the bottom edge goes, not the center. A TV is measured diagonally, and a 16:9 screen is about half as tall as its diagonal, so:

Bottom of the screen = 42 in − (screen height ÷ 2)

TV height chart by size

Our arithmetic for a 16:9 screen centered 42 in from the floor, rounded to the nearest half inch. Screen sizes are the picture alone; the frame adds a little. Highest bottom edge puts your eyes on the line a third of the way up the screen, the highest Yamaha suggests.

Yamaha’s own example is a 65-inch TV, about 33 inches tall: centered on a 42.5-inch eye height, its bottom edge goes 26 inches up, and it can go as high as 31.5 inches, with your eyes a third of the way up the screen. CEDIA, the trade association for home technology installers, advises that no viewer should look more than 15° up or down to the top or bottom of the screen, which typically puts your eyes a third to a sixth of the way up it (Acoustic Frontiers).

The chart is for a typical sofa. If yours sits unusually low or high, measure your own eye height while seated: Bob Vila suggests averaging the eye heights of everyone who watches.

Mounting a TV over a console or soundbar

Bob Vila leaves about 4 to 6 inches between the top of a TV stand or shelf and the bottom of the TV. That means checking the furniture against the chart: a 65-inch TV centered at 42 inches starts at 26, so the console under it should be about 20 to 22 inches tall. Yamaha notes that most furniture is about 30 inches high, and raising a 65-inch TV to its highest position, with the bottom at 31½ inches, leaves room for it, if only 1½ inches.

Yamaha mounts a soundbar as close to 42.5 inches, seated ear height, as it can, which usually means just below the TV. Allow for its height when you set the gap.

TV over a fireplace

Over a fireplace, check the angle rather than the height. Bob Vila leaves at least 6 to 12 inches between the top of the mantel and the bottom of the TV, which puts the screen well above eye level. Yamaha calls it the wrong place for a TV.

With a mantel 54 inches up, a 55-inch TV 6 inches above it has its top edge at 87 inches. From a sofa 10 feet away, that’s a look up of about 21° to the top of the screen, past CEDIA’s 15°. Sitting farther back lowers the angle. The TV size calculator shows the angle for your height and distance.

How high to mount a TV in a bedroom

Measure from where you watch. Sit or lie in bed the way you usually watch, have someone measure the height of your eyes from the floor, and center the screen there. The 42-inch rule assumes a sofa, and a bed puts your eyes somewhere else.

If the TV goes over a dresser, it may have to sit higher than that; Sanus suggests a tilting mount to angle the screen down toward the bed. Dressers run 30 to 50 inches tall (see our dresser dimensions), so with Bob Vila’s 4 to 6 inches above it, a TV over a 30-inch dresser starts at 34 to 36 inches.

Before you drill

• Find the mount’s position, not the TV’s. The wall plate sits behind the screen, so measure from the mounting holes on the back of the TV to its bottom edge, and add that to your bottom-edge height. Sanus’s HeightFinder tool does this for its own mounts.
• Allow for the mount’s depth. An articulating mount can hold a TV up to about 6 inches off the wall (Yamaha), which narrows a walkway in front of it.
• Check the viewing distance too. Height and size go together: the farther back you sit, the bigger the screen you can use, and the TV size calculator works out both.