What size LED wall does an event need? Viewing distance, pixel pitch and the five sizes

With LED wall rental the most common question is not price but size: ‘how big a wall does an 80-person conference need?’, ‘is one panel enough for the wedding entrance?’, ‘can it be seen from the back?’. The answer is not a matter of taste but of three measurable things: viewing distance, room size and content. In this article we take these three in turn, and at the end we say for each of our five rental sizes when it is the right choice — not the largest, but the right one.

Step one: pixel pitch — what P1.5 to P3 means in practice

Pixel pitch is the distance between the centres of two neighbouring LEDs in millimetres. The pixel pitch of our rental panels differs by version: the indoor P1.5 is 1.5 mm, the P2 is 2 mm, the indoor and the outdoor cabinet-built P2.5 are 2.5 mm, and the outdoor cabinet-built P3 is 3 mm. By the industry rule of thumb the comfortable minimum viewing distance in metres is roughly the pixel pitch in millimetres — 1.5 metres for P1.5, 2 for P2, 2.5 for P2.5, 3 for P3. For the P2 that means anyone viewing from more than 2 metres sees no pixels, only a picture; from 1 metre, right beside the counter, the raster is visible, but nobody reads a wedding welcome sign from 1 metre. In event practice pixel pitch is therefore rarely a limit: even our coarsest version, the outdoor P3, sits at the fine end of the usual P3–P5 band of large event walls, and the indoor P1.5 is fine enough for a photo wall viewed at arm's length. So size should be chosen by viewing distance, not resolution.

Step two: viewing distance and the image-height rule

The starting point for sizing is the farthest viewer. There are two rules of thumb, depending on what the audience does. If they have to READ the wall — a chart, a programme, an agenda, a caption — the image height should be about one eighth of the farthest viewer's distance: 8 metres of room depth needs a 1-metre image height, 16 metres a 2-metre one. If they only have to SEE it — a logo, a mood video, a photo replay, a monogram — one twentieth is enough: from 20 metres even a 1-metre logo reads well. Our panels are 192 cm tall, so the image height is fixed: for readable content that is enough up to roughly 15 metres of room depth, for spectacle up to 35–40 metres. The width, i.e. the number of panels, then depends on the content and the room width.

Step three: the content's aspect ratio

The number of panels also sets the aspect ratio, and this is the most often forgotten factor. One panel is 1:3, portrait — like a poster or a phone screen. Two panels are 2:3, three panels an exact square (1:1), four panels 4:3, five panels close to 16:9 (exactly 16:9.6). If you mirror PowerPoint slides or a laptop, you need 4:3 or 16:9, otherwise the picture shows with black bars or cropped. If the goal is an Instagram video, a square advert or a photo wall, the three-panel square is ideal. If a widescreen video, a stream or a wedding film runs, the five-panel wall. And the one- and two-panel portrait ratio is exactly right for portrait content: welcome sign, menu, speaker photo, product image.

Step four: the room and the stage

The room width and the stage size limit the upper end. On a 4-metre-wide, 3-metre-high stage the 320 cm wide five-panel wall just fits and fills the backdrop; on a 2.5-metre podium the three- or four-panel wall is right, otherwise the wall sticks out. Allow for the feet too: the panels stand on their own feet, so leave half a metre of free space in front of and behind the wall. Access matters too: the panels are heavy, they go up by lift or stairs, and the van must be able to park near the entrance for loading — we ask about this at booking, because if there is no help on site we charge a surcharge. If the room is bright or glass-walled, that is not a size question: the indoor panel is sharp in daylight, so there the LED wall is the right choice over a projector anyway.

The five sizes — when to use which

1 panel, 64 × 192 cm, 320 × 960 px: entrance, reception, welcome desk, wedding welcome sign, menu and promotion board; instead of a printed roll-up where moving images are wanted. 2 panels, 128 × 192 cm: backdrop for a room of 30–60 people, a smaller product launch, a press wall, an award-show backdrop — this is where the display turns from a poster into a wall. 3 panels, 192 × 192 cm, square: exhibition stand backdrop, social-media videos, a wall behind the DJ booth, a shop window; the most flexible event size. 4 panels, 256 × 192 cm, 4:3: conference, talk, general meeting, training — the ratio of presentations, instead of a projector in a bright room, for rooms of roughly 60–120 people. 5 panels, 320 × 192 cm, 16:9: wedding projection and photo replay, live stream, indoor sports projection, stage backdrop above 100 people. If you need more — a 200-person ballroom, an outdoor festival — or the venue is under open sky, our own outdoor cabinet-built version comes into play (P2.5 or P3): we rent that out too, quoted individually.

A worked example: an 80-person corporate dinner

An 80-person corporate year-end dinner in a 10 × 18 metre hotel room, with a small stage in front of the shorter wall. The farthest table sits 16 metres from the stage. The programme has a 20-minute CEO presentation with slides, then photo replay and music visuals all evening. Because of the readable content the one-eighth rule applies: 16 metres would call for a 2-metre image height, and the 192 cm panel height is just enough as long as the slides avoid tiny type. The presentation is 16:9, so five panels are right: 320 × 192 cm, which fits the 4-metre stage. If the slides were 4:3, the four-panel wall; if the presentation were dropped and only photos ran, the three-panel square would do on the shorter wall. This line of thought — farthest viewer, content, ratio, stage — works the same way for every event.

Three typical mistakes in choosing a size

The first is oversizing: ordering a five-panel wall for a 40-person meeting room because ‘it is the best’. From two metres a 3.2-metre wall is tiring, and the edge of the picture falls outside the field of view — there the two- or three-panel wall is right, and cheaper. The second is ignoring the ratio: putting a 16:9 video on a three-panel square and wondering about the black bars. The third is reversed logic: working out the number of panels backwards from the price, then adapting the content to it. The right way: first the farthest viewer and the content, from that the size, and only then the price — which the calculator works out from the postcode straight away, delivery included.

If you are still unsure

Tell us the room size, the headcount and what would run on the wall when you book — from that we can say how many panels you need, and if it turns out on site that one panel more or fewer would be better, it can still be changed during setup, because the panels simply link side by side. Each of the five sizes has its own page in the rental section, with a drawn preview, resolution and price calculator. By event type, our wedding, conference and stage pages carry the specific recommendation.