Home Staging Tips for Palm Beach County...I Think I Need A New Room For My TV!

These are good tips for homeowners who want to optimize their placement of the TV in their family room or media room.  What's funny is that I've seen audio and video geeks break these rules.  I went to a house last week where the owner put a 55" flat panel in a room about 11' wide.  It felt cramped.

Kathy - I have to go get out my tape measure now, but I think we're the right distance away from our TV.

Kathy, televisions can over take a room. I didn't know the rule of thumb for the viewing distance. Thanks.

Kathy-great advice-I am very sensitive to "Size Matters" and have been in the situation where a client insisted on an enormous TV that has overwhelmed the space.  Even if it's a flat screen, it requires space around it for all the additional equipment.

Kathy, Our living room is our media room as well and while my husband would disagree with you on the size of TV, I am with you on this! Congrats on the well-deserved feature too!

Kathy, I see so many TVs of varying sizes. Some homes seem to have them everywhere! One million dollar plus home had a huge one in the living room for their son to play video games.

Kathy:

This is great info.  I think many folks buy the biggest TV they can afford without any regard to the size of the room or where to place it in the room.  And when you go to list the house, it can be one of the hardest items to convince a seller to downsize or store elsewhere.

Kathy:

Loved this post.  So many people live for their TV.  We have to be able to accommodate them and their needs.  Thanks for the info about TV placement.  I need that.  My husband has a huge TV in a small room.

I would have never thought the 12 feet from my 46" screen was too far away.  Hmmmmm. 

Kathy - This is wonderful information to share with customers and clients--there's a formula for everything it seems..."the optimal distance would be no closer than 1.5 times the screen size  and no further away than 2x the size of the screen.   So for a 50" screen you'd want to be no closer than 6.25 feet and no further away than 8.3 feet."

Great stats Kathy. So the monster TVs don't need 25 feet? LOL

Great advice Kathy - we have 4 TV's in our home and I refuse to put one in our formal living room - it would ruin the whole look!

Hi Kathy, I wanted to click suggest because I found it to be so helpful to me; however, there was no button to click suggest.

In any case, I'm so happy to read this that I just had to bookmark it. I get lots of buyers asking me questions about the flat screen TV all the time. The problem is, I never know what to say. For many years before and after moving to Texas (or becoming a Realtor) I didn't have a TV. I finally broke down and bought a small 7 inch television in 1997 and I still have that one. It's the only one in my house and for me it's perfect because I'm rarely home to watch it. So when people ask me these questions about the flat screen TV, I'm clueless!

Thanks to you, I now have a reference to go to and to share the information with them, just because of you. Thank you so much Kathy. It's been very embarrassing for me and I didn't know how to handle the questions.

You know, it's funny this hasn't come up for me yet in the last 1.5 years of part-time staging. I have yet to see a home where the TV was really a problem . . . except for one semi-vacant with an old box TV on a cart that the owner did agree to move out. But you bring up some good points! Thanks!

Kathy, Thanks for the parameters. I just thought bigger and louder was the way to go. Your way is obviously better for getting a house sold.

Kathy--great post and I agree with Julia about bookmarking it so that I have exact numbers to give clients.  I just don't understand why size is the one thing that doesn't seem to matter when buying a flat screen.  It's like the TV is huge and just make the furniture work with it.