Smartway2 How To Choose The Right Conference Room Tv Size

How to Choose the Right Conference Room TV Size

We’ve all been to meetings where it’s impossible to see the presentation because the conference room TV size is completely wrong. After a few minutes of constantly moving your neck trying to see over someone’s head, squinting and rolling your chair back and forth, you start wishing you’d stayed home. At least you had a clear view of the presentation over Zoom in your home office.

It turns out the problem here isn’t your lack of superhuman eyesight. Rather, employers need to measure workplace demand and provide the right type and size of equipment in every conference room. There are a lot of companies that can do to ensure TVs in conference rooms are the right size and improve the workplace experience.

Here’s what to consider before choosing your next conference room TV or projector screen.

1. Employee workplace demand for conference rooms

But the best place to start is with the people using the conference room. That’s because before investing $1000 in a new “86 TV, it’s best to make sure employees are actually going to be using it.

Nailing down the right size TV for every one of your conference rooms starts with understanding the people who will end up sharing their screens and peeking at PowerPoints on whichever device you choose.

Employee workplace demand for conference rooms is a hypothetical measure of how people plan to use conference rooms.

If you’re using a meeting room booking system, you can measure workplace demand by looking at how often different sized conference rooms are being reserved, how many people they’re being booked for and even what the purpose of the meeting is.

Pro-tip: Using an intelligent workplace scheduling tool matches employees with the right meeting room equipment and resources for their needs, from large screens to lunch catering. That way, you can see how frequently people are booking meeting rooms with TVs, and the size of the TVs they’re booking.

2. Actual employee occupancy of conference rooms

Actual occupancy is a concrete measure of how many people end up using a conference room and how they’re using them. You need to consider both workplace demand for conference rooms and their actual occupancy  together to get the TV size right.

To measure actual occupancy, monitor how many people end up occupying the conference rooms they book through tracking space utilization.

For example, a conference room with a capacity of 20 people might seem like the ideal spot for the biggest TV on the market. But after measuring space utilization, you find out the room is mostly booked by five people or less. Investing thousands in a video wall won’t yield much of an ROI for the few people using it.

A good next step could be to break the large room down into two smaller ones, each with a smaller TV screen, or manage occupancy by only making that conference room bookable for groups of 12 or more.

Hybrid work is now the status quo. That means more employees coming into the office and more employees using conference rooms. It could be that a bigger TV is worth investing in now since in a few months’ time, meeting rooms will be occupied close to capacity.

Read more: 5 Space Utilization Metrics for a better Workspace in 2023

3. Conference room size

The size and dimensions of the rooms themselves might seem like the most obvious place to start when choosing a meeting room TV. And it is critical to take meeting room size into account, but only once you’ve made sure the rooms are actually occupied.

In other words, a large TV screen for a large meeting room might seem like a good idea until you realize the room is used once every two months.

So once you’ve looked at occupancy, how can you balance that with conference room size?

First, pull in all floor plans from your space planning team, and look at the exact dimensions and seating locations down to the square inch.

Then, overlay the floor plans of your conference rooms with actual occupancy data. This will help you visualize which of the large, medium and small conference rooms get traffic that’s relative to their size, and whether the length, width and height of the room warrants a proportionately sized meeting room TV screen. It will also help you visualize and measure the exact distance from the viewer who’s furthest away to the TV screen itself.

Here are three rules of thumb to help you find the right conference room TV size for any size room – given that it’s being occupied, of course.

According to Jones IT, the diagonal length of the TV screen should be about half the length of the meeting room.

According to Cenero, divide the distance of the furthest viewer (or seat) from the TV screen by six to get the right size screen height.

And finally, this easy-to-understand chart from Clear Touch further simplifies the distance between the furthest viewer/seat and the right-size TV screen:

The distance of the farthest viewerIdeal display size
14 feet or less55 inches
15-16 feet65 inches
17-19feet75 inches
20-22 feet86 inches
Greater than 22 feetConsider a video wall

4. The types of information employees are sharing

This one seems like a no-brainer, but the ideal screen size depends not just on the people in the room and the size of the room, but also on the information being shared.

Let’s say your company is in the architectural or medical industry. It’s a given that a lot of annotations and fine print will be up on screens during meetings, so it’s best to air on the side of caution and invest in larger TVs (as long as conference rooms are actually being occupied).

In other industries, different teams will be sharing information with different levels of complexity. Two different conference rooms with the same number of meeting attendees could need completely different TV sizes based on the information being shared.

A development team meeting will need a larger screen than a quarterly sales meeting where the presentation is mostly pie charts and graphs, for example.

Since most employees tend to come into the office for in-person collaboration, brainstorming and connection, conference room TVs will be used more frequently by different departments.

A successful hybrid workplace strategy looks at what different departments and employee groups need and want from the physical workplace, and then aligns these needs and wants with the actual workplace (and conference room) environment.

Smartway2 Hybrid Workplace Strategy Cover Image
Workplace strategy
10 min read

How to Create a Hybrid Workplace Strategy

Find out how the right strategy can keep leadership and employees happy and productive with hybrid work.

More questions to ask:

  • How will the display need to be mounted?
  • Does the wall you’ll be mounting the screen on need to be reinforced?
  • Does the conference room TV need a camera for video conferencing? (e.g. for client meetings)
  • What’s the right viewing angle for the conference room TV? (45 degrees from participants on either side to the centre of the TV screen is a safe bet)

Smartway2’s intelligent workplace scheduling software gives employees everything they need to have a 10/10 day in the office – from conference rooms with the right size TVs to desks and even parking spaces.

Smartway2 By Hubstar

Book your demo here

Author

Jackie Towers

Last updated March 2, 2023