📺TV Viewing Distance Calculator

About this tool

Choose whether you know the screen size or your seating distance, pick feet or metres and the aspect ratio. From a screen size, the calculator shows cinematic and recommended viewing distances and how close you can sit before 1080p, 4K or 8K pixels become visible. From a distance, it suggests the screen size for each guideline.

How far to sit from a TV

There are two kinds of guidance. Field-of-view guidelines are about immersion. The Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) suggests the screen fill about 30° of your field of view for general viewing, while THX recommends about 40° for a cinema feel. For a 65-inch 16:9 TV, which is about 56.7 inches wide, that is about 8.8 ft (2.7 m) and 6.5 ft (2 m). Resolution guidelines are about sharpness. A person with 20/20 vision resolves detail of about one arcminute, so beyond a certain distance neighbouring pixels blend together. For a 65-inch screen, 1080p pixels blend from about 8.5 ft and 4K from about 4.2 ft. That's why, at a typical sofa distance of 9 ft, a 65-inch 4K TV looks little sharper than 1080p, though better processing and HDR still make a difference. To choose a size from a distance, a seat 9 ft away suits about a 66-inch screen by the SMPTE guideline. Honest limits: these are guidelines. Room layout, content, eyesight and personal comfort matter more, and many people prefer to sit further back than either guideline. The aspect ratio calculator works out screen dimensions and the screen resolution checker shows your display's details.

Frequently asked questions