Here’s Where the MantelMount Experts Suggest You Should Put a TV in an Open Concept Room

If you recently purchased a home or you’re a frequent Zillow user, you may have noticed a lot of kitchens/dining rooms, and living rooms/kitchens. This phenomenon, known as an open concept floor plan, rose to prominence post-WWII and it appears to be everywhere these days.

At the end of the war, domestic life saw an increase in informality. Walled off sitting rooms for formal entertaining began to house early TVs. Living rooms, only accessible from a main hallway, opened up spilling into kitchen and dining areas. By the 1990s, this gradual move to more integrated rooms created the large open concept living spaces we’re familiar with today.

While open concept layouts provide homeowners with a lot of flexibility, it can bring up layout issues, for instance, where to put a TV in a living room. If you’re struggling to set up your new open concept living space, we have some recommendations for the optimal place to put your TV.

Choose a Focal Point

A great place to start, if you're struggling to decide where to put your TV in a living room, is to pick the room’s focal point. Most rooms will have an obvious focal point. That may be a fireplace, grand windows, an alcove in the wall, or some other architectural feature that draws your eye to one point in the room.

Once you discover your room’s focal point, work out from that area. If your focal point is a fireplace, for example, arrange couches and chairs around it. The recommended minimum distance between your couch and your fireplace is three feet. But, this would be way too close for easily viewing your TV.

Instead, the optimal placement for your TV in the living room should follow the 8:1 ratio. This will create the best TV-viewing experience and allow you to define your living area, even in an open concept layout.

What is the 8:1 Ratio?

While it’s very important to consider how high to mount your TV, it’s also important to choose the right distance for your furniture around the TV. Many people eyeball this, or choose the distance of their furniture based off the edges of an area rug.

But if you’re working with large room dimensions like in an open concept living room, you could risk placing the TV too close or too far away. This is where the 8:1 ratio comes in handy.

The 8:1 ratio is a measuring device for determining the optimal distance between your TV and your furniture. It states that for every eight inches in your TV’s size, set your couch or chairs one foot away. If you aren’t sure about the size of your TV, we’ve created a fantastic guide of different TV sizes.

Once you know the size of your TV, you can determine how far away you should place your furniture. Let’s say you have a 65” TV. Simply divide 65 by 8 and this number will determine how far away you should put your couch:

65  /  8  =  8.13

You can add a few extra feet if your living room allows, but the 8:1 ratio is a great starting point for your home or apartment’s living room ideas with a TV. You can also use this helpful table if your TV isn’t a standard size:

What if the Room Doesn’t Have a Fireplace?

While mounting a TV above the fireplace is very common practice, it may not always be the best solution for your room. For instance, if you’re living in a small apartment with a fireplace built into a corner to save space, there may not be enough room above the fireplace above for the TV. Or, mounting a TV in the corner may create a bad TV-viewing experience.  In that case, you might still be scratching your head about where to put your TV in your open concept room.

On the other hand, your main room may not have a fireplace at all, making it even more difficult to create a focal point and place your furniture accordingly. Whatever the case, the TV right placement in your living room may require you to be a little creative.

If the focal point is in the corner of the room, try to build out from the corner. Instead of mounting your TV above the fireplace, choose the wall next to it and arrange your TV on a piece of furniture, like a console table or in an entertainment center, that is a comparable height to the mantle of the TV. Then use the 8:1 ratio to arrange your furniture.

If you don’t have a fireplace or an obvious focal point, choose a wall opposite your dining room or kitchen area and mount your TV. Make sure you select your mounting tools based on the material of the wall and install the TV accordingly. You can also read up on our most FAQs on TV mounting if you aren’t sure where to begin.

Picking the Right TV Mount for Your Open Concept Layout

Once you know exactly where to place your TV, the mounting materials you need to mount it, and your furniture’s placement, you need to pick the right wall mount. Just like TVs, wall mounts have modernized and become more sophisticated.

From mounts that tilt and articulate by mere degrees, to pull down mounts that lift and lower your TV into the perfect TV-viewing position, there are hundreds of options on the TV wall mount market.

MantelMount has created one of the most sophisticated pull down TV mounts available. With counterbalance technology and lightweight alloys, MantelMount wall mounts glide your TV up and down so mounting height is never an issue — you can always easily adjust your flat screen to eye-level.

To match the layout flexibility of your open concept room, you may opt for a swivel mount. MantelMount MM540 Enhanced Pull Down TV Mount gives TV-viewers the benefit of a pull-down mount and also the flexible viewing option of a swivel mount. With 60° swivel capabilities in one direction or 30° degree range of motion both directions, this enhanced TV mount gives viewers the ability to watch their favorite shows anywhere in a room with a modern open layout.

To find out more about which world-class mount is right for you, get in touch with a helpful expert today!