MantelMount

A wall-mounted flat-screen TV is often the perfect addition to any room in your home. The theater-like viewing angle of a mounted TV can be the perfect way to watch your favorite shows and movies, relax, and unwind. But before you settle on that comfortable viewing spot and mount a flat screen TV, there are several factors to consider. One of those factors is deciding how high you should hang a TV on the wall. A common question people ask is, “How high should I mount my TV on the wall?” Watching TV at an incorrect height can negatively impact your viewing experience, causing neck and eye strain, so it’s important to pick the right height to mount your TV. How High Should You Hang a TV? Before deciding on how high to hang a TV, it’s important to take into account the following: Size of the TV Before mounting, be sure to take careful measurements of your flat-screen television. Generally, wider TVs are mounted higher than narrower ones. This is to account for the extra space it occupies to create a perfectly balanced view. Size of the Room and Viewing Distance The size of the room is another factor. Think about the size, layout, and design of your room. How wide is the wall and what material is it? How far is it from the nearest seating area? What direction is it facing and will any TV glare be an issue? Where are your electric outlets? These are some of the things to keep in mind when determining the height of your mounted flat-screen TV. Viewing distance also makes an impact on your entertainment experience. Being too far away from the TV can contribute to feeling less engrossed in what you’re watching, but being too close can be a literal headache. Luckily, there is a formula to solve this problem.  What Calculations Do I Need for Mounting a TV to a Wall? The method to calculate the accurate viewing distance and TV mount height is to take the size and divide it by 0.55. As a quick reference, for a 42” television, the optimal viewing distance is 76 inches away. For a 55”, you’ll want to be 100 inches away. As a rule, a 42” television should be mounted about 56 inches from floor to TV center and a 70” television should be mounted about 67 inches to the center of the screen. But this preference could vary from person to person. An important factor, the viewing angle of the TV from your sofa or chair, determines how high to hang your TV. In addition to the viewing angle, keep in mind the average eye level from the floor. How High Should a 55-Inch TV Be Mounted? A 55” TV should be around 61 inches from the floor to the center of the TV screen. How High Should a 65-Inch TV Be Mounted? A 65” TV should be around 65 inches from the floor to the center of the TV screen. How High Should a 70-Inch TV Be Mounted? A 70” TV should be around 67 inches from the floor to the center of the TV screen. Factors in Mounting a TV on a Wall There are many factors that come into play when determining what the perfect height is to mount your flat-screen TV. One typical challenge that is hard to overcome, when televisions are shared, is individual height.  Also, a person’s preferred position for watching TV plays a role in determining the mounting height. If a person likes watching TV while lying down on the couch, they might mount their television in a lower position. Conversely, someone who sits straight and watches TV might mount their television a bit higher. Mounting a TV on a Wall using MantelMount MantelMount’s innovative, high-quality pull-down TV mounts allow you to easily adjust a flat-screen TV. You're able to move the TV to a more optimal viewing height and angle.  Using automotive gas pistons, our mounts allow your flat-screen TV to be pulled off the wall, down to eye-level, and swiveled left or right. The movement that the versatile mounts deliver assure true comfort and the perfect view every time you watch TV. The angle of your MantelMount can accommodate any change to a dynamic room setup or how the audience chooses to view TV. Among others, MantelMount's robust pull-down TV mount collection has features like heat-sensing handles, auto-straightening, paintable covers, and a soundbar attachment. So stop asking yourself questions like, “how high should I mount my TV?” and buy a MantelMount.

This might be a familiar scenario: you move into a new apartment or home with the perfect spot for the living room and TV area. The only problem is, the wall opposite the couch is masonry. After picking the right TV for the room, you might opt to place it on top of a media console, but if the TV is too large, you could create an undesirable, or even precarious, TV-viewing experience. You can’t help but feel that mounting your TV on the masonry would solve many of these issues, but you aren’t sure just how to mount a tv on a brick wall. Luckily, with the right TV wall mount, some safety precautions, the right tools or some help from an installer, you can create the perfect TV-viewing experience no matter how your living room’s walls are constructed. Can You Mount a TV on Brick? First things first, you can mount a TV on brick. Many people don’t realize that mounting a TV on brick — or even a concrete wall — is a possibility so they do not take advantage of the prime location for a television. Whether you are mounting a TV on brick above a fireplace or just the living room brick wall, your TV will have a comfortable home amongst the facade of dried clay blocks. Before you begin mounting a TV on brick, it is not only important to have all of the necessary tools and complementary accessories, but also to figure out how high to mount the TV. Typically, the center of the TV should sit just above eye level, so a 55” TV will sit 61” from the floor while a 70” TV will sit 67” from the floor. If you’ve been searching for a mount that can pull down to eye-level and is capable of being mounted on brick or stone, MantelMount is an option worthy of consideration. Our MantelMount kits come with concrete anchors and specific instructions in the box in the event of this sort of installation. After you’ve established the location, you’ll need to determine if the masonry is strong enough to hold the weight of your TV set up. Typically, the brick or stone used in the wall needs to be several inches thick and able to hold five times the weight of the TV and the TV mount in order for it to be safely secured to a brick wall. We highly recommend working with a masonry expert to establish the wall’s strength. Once you’ve thoroughly examined the wall, you can gather the necessary materials should you decide to tackle the project yourself. What Is the Best TV Mount for a Brick Wall? Although MantelMount cannot recommend a specific TV mount for your home — as each household might have a different television and each individual brick wall will have its own characteristics and possible quirks  — we can spell out the available options and which might be the best TV mount for your brick wall.While all MantelMounts can be mounted on masonry or standard drywall, our "house pick" is the MM700 Pro Pull Down TV Mount, perfect for TVs ranging from 30 lbs to 115 lbs. As long as your masonry supports 5 times the weight of the TV and TV mount combined and you use our provided concrete anchors, you should be in good shape. If you are unsure about the strength of your masony, please consult a professional contractor before attempting this installation. Now if you’re mounting a TV on brick or stone that you know is less sturdy — such as thin brick facades or simulated stone panels — you can pair the MM700 Pro Mount with the AB40 Adapter Bracket. The AB40 Bracket will provide the sufficient pass-through support needed for the mount on thinner stone or brick. If you are installing  our MM340 Standard Pull Down TV Mount or the MM540 Enhanced Pull Down TV Mount on a thin brick or simulated stone panel, those models would require both  the AB40 Adapter Bracket and also the SSB40 Single Stud Wall Adapter. If you’re unsure about mounting a TV on a brick wall, keep in mind that MantelMount TV Wall Mounts are one of the best TV mounts for brick and stone because they come in a variety of sizes and feature-sets, and include a smooth pull down mechanism that makes it possible to create a seamless TV-viewing experience. If your ultimate decision is to use a MantelMount product for your brick or stone wall, please study our thorough and detailed installation instructions, and don’t hesitate to contact support with questions. What Tools do I need to Mount a TV Onto Brick? Just as establishing the strength of the wall is a key step in mounting a TV on brick, it’s also highly recommended to use the right tools for the job. This will help reduce the possibility of damaging your brick wall and also ensure your TV is securely and safely mounted. As a preliminary step, you will need to know the specs of the TV mount you’re choosing in order to select the right size screws, washers, and bolts. Once you know the specs of your mount, you’ll also need:  Painter’s tape Tape measure A level Concrete anchors and lag bolts - these items come in every MantelMount box Concrete screws and washers Drill with a hammer drill function Concrete drill bit Socket adapter, ratchet, or rubber mallet Once you gather your materials, the first thing you’ll want to do to prepare your brick wall for your living room TV is mark the location on the wall where you are going to drill. With your tape measure, measure on the wall where the center of the TV will sit (60” - 67”) and create a mark. On your TV mount, measure the distance between the center and the bottom of the mount. This measurement is what you’ll use to mark on the wall where the bottom of the mount will go and plot out the drill holes for the mount’s slats. Once you’ve marked each screw hole on the wall, you can prepare your installation materials. 3 Easy Steps: Mounting a TV on a Brick Wall Step 1. Drill You will need to choose the concrete drill bit that fits the anchors and screws you’ll be using for your brick wall. A ¼” drill bit will typically be the right size for the job, but sizing will vary based on the individual specs of your TV mount. If any of your screw holes line up with mortar, adjust accordingly so you can anchor the screw at least half an inch from the brick’s edges into the brick. Select the hammer drill setting on your drill and create holes in the masonry at each spot you’ve marked on the wall for your TV mount slats. You’ll likely only need to drill 2.25” - 2.5” into the wall to secure the mount. You can mark this spot on your drill with a piece of painter’s tape for accuracy. Step 2. Insert Anchors After you drill, use a vacuum or shop vac nozzle to clear out the freshly drilled holes. If you’re adding anchors, clearing out dust will allow the anchor to sit flush with the wall and offer support to your screws. Knock the anchors gently into place with a rubber mallet. Step 3. Install the Bracket Now it’s time to mount the bracket into the masonry with your concrete screws. Place the bracket on the wall so the slats line up with the drill holes and anchors. Next, add washers to your concrete screws and thread them through the TV mount slats.  Secure one screw into place with the socket adapter on your drill or the appropriately sized ratchet and use your level to ensure the bracket isn’t crooked. Then, once your bracket is straight, tighten the rest of the screws. Then, all that’s left to do is install your TV onto the bracket.  While MantelMount has a far more detailed installation process than the steps outlined above, one advantage of using MantelMount products when it comes to mounting a TV on brick is that our friendly and experienced customer service professionals are a great resource to help guide you through the (sometimes) tricky process. Since you are now safe in the knowledge of some of the best TV mounts for a brick wall and how to mount a TV to a brick wall, stop staring at your empty living room facade and start living the dream with a MantelMount pull down TV mount secured to your brick wall.

Whether you’re single and living alone or you’re catching a moment of solitude in a house packed with kids, sitting down to watch your favorite show or catching up on the game should be an enjoyable experience. Unfortunately, for those with kids, having the latest entertainment gadgets often comes with more consideration than simply deciding how high to mount a TV or what kind of flat screen to buy. Free standing TVs, bookshelves, and storage units all present a certain risk to curious kids and toddlers. In fact, Nationwide Children’s Hospital estimated in 2019 that one child was injured every 46 minutes from furniture or TV-related accidents with tip-overs as the leading cause of many of these hospital visits. This statistic alone is enough to make any parent think twice about the safety of their TV set up. Luckily, with some basic safety precautions and companies, like MantelMount, that are devoted to safety, parents can also create the perfect TV-viewing experience in their homes while keeping their little ones safe. Read on to find how to prevent TV tip-overs and baby proof an entertainment center. What Causes a TV Tip-over? Every tip-over incident is circumstantial. Whether a child accidentally trips over an exposed TV wire or they bump into a wobbly TV stand in a bout of excitement, tip-overs are unfortunate but they can be prevented by creating awareness around the common reasons tip-overs happen and baby proofing your TV area accordingly. One of the most common causes of TV tip-overs is placement on a storage shelf or piece of furniture that isn’t meant for a TV. Tall dressers, narrow storage cabinets, and unstable console tables are often much less secure than they appear. And when you add drawers and doors that a child can open, bang shut, or climb, that creates additional risk for a TV to tip. Keep in mind that the safest way to baby proof TV wires and your entertainment center is to safely mount your flat screen on the wall out of reach from a cantankerous toddler. Getting Started Baby Proofing an Entertainment Center Start by Wall Mounting Your TV Many parents and families baby proof the TV area by strapping their TV down to the console or storage cabinet. And while this can provide some level of tip-over prevention, it isn’t an entirely fail safe solution. Modern flat screen TVs are much more top heavy than the bulky CRT TVs of the ‘90s. This means that they are far more prone to swaying and wobbling than a TV with a prominent base. That’s why the best way to baby proof an entertainment center is to mount your TV on the wall. We’ll admit, it’s hard to strike a balance between TV wall mount child safety and placing a TV at the right height for the optimal viewing experience. Better yet, MantelMount pulldown wall mounts give parents the flexibility to lower their TVs to the perfect TV-viewing height when they’re ready to enjoy their favorite movie or show, and place the TV out of reach when the little ones are active at play. Our friendly technicians and customer service reps are always around to answer your burning questions about the installation process, but if you feel prepared to go it alone, here’s a good rule of thumb for finding the right height for your TV. Place a TV within 3 or 6 inches of the TV’s dimensions. For instance, the middle of a 55-inch TV should sit 61” off the ground while the middle of a 70-inch TV should be 67 inches off the floor and centered over a console table or fireplace, if that doesn’t place the TV too high. Secure Any Cabinets to the Wall While mounting your TV will prevent potential injuries from TV tip-overs, it’s also important to secure the furniture around and below your TV to keep kids safe. Console tables, TV cabinets, shelves, open entertainment centers, and any make-shift storage cabinets can easily teeter when kids pull open drawers and doors and venture to climb on top or crawl inside. Securing these pieces to the wall in studs or with drywall mollies will not only eliminate injuries from a wobbly TV, it will also eliminate the potential for injury caused by heavy furniture falling over if it’s rocked or jostled in any way.   Don’t Forget to Baby Proof TV Wires While TV wall mount child safety calls for installing a TV out of reach from young children, it also calls for hiding wires, cable boxes, a sound bar or game consoles that could potentially cause injury or become damaged themselves. The easiest way to do this is to place game consoles and technical accessories behind cabinet doors and secure your entertainment center’s doors shut with child proof handle covers. Additionally, families can secure a sound bar in place with a sound bar adapter built for their TV mount of choice. To baby proof TV wires, parents can invest in cord wraps and protectors and secure wires to the floor or behind TV cabinets and cover any unused outlets around their entertainment center with baby proof power strips and outlet plugs. It may not seem like much, but taking these small steps for baby proofing your entertainment center can go a long way to keep children safe and create a stress-free TV-viewing environment. To learn more about MantelMount, contact our friendly customer service representatives for more information. Or, if you’re ready to get started with an installation today, find a dealer and an installer near you.

Although purchasing a MantelMount pull down TV mount or drop down and swivel TV mount will enhance your TV viewing experience, there are other factors at play, including lighting, comfortability with furniture — and understanding just how far away from the TV you should sit with couches or chairs — as well as knowing what the ideal TV viewing distance is and taking advantage of that. There are a number of articles talking about the optimum distance between you and your TV, so we’ve filtered through a number of them to cull the best advice. Recommended Viewing Distance The process can be a bit tricky. If you’re a TV watcher that tends to sit back far, the risk is there to lose the sharp detail that you paid for when you bought your HDTV in the first place (if you have a 4K TV or 8K TV, then you spent even more money for more detail).  However, if you’re someone who might sit a little too close, the individual pixels start to become visible and, ultimately, distracting. Furthermore, there are health factors when a viewing angle is so close including audio distortion and eye strain. Ultimately, you have to find that happy medium. Here, we break down the best viewing distance for your living room’s TV screen size. First, the concept of the science behind picture quality. Pixels, Standard Definition, High Resolution TVs, and All That In Between When understanding the best TV viewing range, one of the first things to understand is the concept of pixels. Every digital image is made up of a grid of colored dots or squares called pixels.  For instance, a 1080p HDTV has 1080 rows of 1920 pixels each. That’s a grand total of 2,073,600 pixels; it doesn’t matter whether the TV size is a 43-inch TV, a 55-inch TV, or a larger TV (think 100 inches wide), the number of pixels remains constant. What does change, however, is the size of the pixels; the bigger the TV screen, the easier it is to see them — which is not ideal since pixels should be too small to see. THX — the company founded by legendary filmmaker George Lucas, which develops high-fidelity, audio/visual reproduction standards for movie theaters, immersive experience screening rooms, and home theaters — offers a simple formula for calculating the closest you can get to an HDTV without seeing the pixels: Divide the advertised TV size by 0.84. However, there are opposing points of view. In a TechHive article, the writer notes, “The speaker manufacturer Aperion Audio recommends that you not sit closer than six and a half feet from a 50-inch 1080p set. Aperion also recommends you sit no farther than 9 feet 9 inches for the best viewing experience.” TV Size Viewing Distance Range Via the THX calculation, figure one foot of distance for every 10 inches of screen size. Keep in mind that the viewing distance formula does not take into consideration the field of view from your couch or any glare or external factor which might require a change is your seating preferences while watching TV. For the following TV screen sizes, this should be the viewing distance: 43-inch TV: At least 4.3 feet away 55-inch TV: At least 5.5 feet away 65-inch TV: At least 6.5 feet away 75-inch TV: At least 7.5 feet away 4K TVs and 8K TVs, however, present a different issue. Because of the high-definition screen with the high resolution picture quality that they come with, as well as the advanced clarity and sharpness, you can sit closer, but that will cause audio issues. Our advice? Move a little bit closer, maybe 6 inches to a foot. Are you looking for even more data around viewing distance and TV screen size? This piece from The Home Cinema Guide delves into more of the nitty gritty of how far away from the TV should you sit, in addition to having a distance calculator. Interested in understanding more about the science behind screen size and viewing distance? The following video should give insight into the decisions behind how close you should be sitting from a TV, which includes information from the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (or SMPTE) and the standards for audio and visual experiences. Video via Linus Tech Tips How a Mount Helps in the Optimal Viewing Distance for your TV Watching For a television mount, a pull down mount helps to optimize the viewing experience for anyone — those wanting a more home movie theater experience to those playing video games on the TV — and for any TV screen size. Ultimately, it’s about your own watching TV seating preferences, in which nothing is set in stone. However, by utilizing a pull down TV mount or drop down and swivel TV mount, in addition to understanding the optimal viewing distance for TV preferences, the experience will be that much more enhanced. So whether you are having a big family movie night with people scattered about the living room on couches, chairs, and on the floor, or you are enjoying laying down playing a game, with a pillow propping up your neck, the combination of knowing how far away from the TV you should sit and a TV mount will get you to that sweet spot of your ideal TV viewing distance.