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How high should a TV be mounted? Enter the screen size, your own seated eye height and how far back you sit — this calculator returns the mounting height, the bottom and top edges of the panel, and the actual angle from your eye to the top edge, checked against the 15° in CTA/CEDIA CEB23-B. All in inches, off the finished floor.
Measure the eye height sitting on the seat you will actually watch from. Near 42″ is what sofa viewing usually gives, and we tier that figure as verify rather than as a standard — it is the 15° angle worked back from a sofa seat, and it moves with the seating.
Almost every mounting-height article gives you a number. The published guidance does not give you a number — it gives you a limit on an angle: no more than about 15° from the seated eye to the edge of the screen (CTA/CEDIA CEB23-B). That is the source, and it is why the same television wants a different height in a room where the sofa is six feet back and one where it is eleven.
The famous "42 inches to the centre of the screen" is that angle worked back from a sofa seat, which makes it a reasonable default and not a standard. We publish it tiered verify for exactly that reason. Enter your own eye height above and the arithmetic does what the guidance actually asks: it puts the centre where you are looking, then checks the top edge.
One thing not to cite alongside it: the famous SMPTE 30° figure comes from EG 18-1994, and SMPTE withdrew that document on 26 March 2003 — and withdraws a document only where there is a significant possibility of its use causing harm. Half the viewing-geometry advice on the internet descends from it anyway. CEB23-B is current; cite that.
Screens are sold by the diagonal, which is the one dimension that never touches a wall. Panels are 16:9, so the height is about 49% of the diagonal and bezels add fractions of an inch, no more. The height is the number the mounting arithmetic runs on, because half of it is what sits above the centre.
| Size | Panel height | Half of it, above centre |
|---|---|---|
| 55″ | 27″ | 13½″ above the screen centre |
| 65″ | 32″ | 16″ above the screen centre |
| 75″ | 37″ | 18½″ above the screen centre |
| 77″ | 38″ | 19″ above the screen centre |
| 85″ | 42″ | 21″ above the screen centre |
This is why a bigger screen is harder to mount high, and it catches people out. Going from a 65 to an 85 adds five inches to the half-height, so the top edge climbs five inches for the same centre — and the angle climbs with it. A mounting height that was comfortable for the old set can be past the guidance for the new one on the same bracket.
Worked, for the commonest case. A 65-inch panel is 32 inches tall. Centre at a 42-inch seated eye level puts the bottom edge at 26 and the top at 58. Sitting eight feet back — 96 inches — the top edge is 16 inches above the eye, and arctan(16 ÷ 96) is about 9°. Comfortably inside the guidance, with room to spare.
Now push the same screen up to a mantel at 65 inches. The top edge goes to 81, which is 39 inches above the eye, and the angle becomes about 22°. Nothing explodes. It is simply past the guidance, and now you know by how much.
We looked. There is no published figure for how high a television goes above a fireplace — not from CTA, not from CEDIA, not from any manufacturer we could find. What there is, is what happens in practice: the screen centre usually lands somewhere around 65–75 inches off the floor, and that exceeds the 15° guidance from a normal sofa distance.
That is not a prohibition. It is a trade, and the useful thing a calculator can do is put the number on it rather than hand you somebody else's verdict. Enter the mantel height in the forced-centre field above and read the angle. Then decide, because there are real reasons to accept it — a single-focal-wall room, a chimney breast that owns the wall, a set watched mostly for background — and there is one reason not to, which is your neck.
Two things that genuinely help if you go ahead: a tilting or pull-down bracket (which changes the geometry rather than arguing with it), and moving the seating further back, because the angle falls as the distance grows. From the worked example above, that 22° at eight feet drops toward the guidance as the sofa moves away — the calculator will show you exactly where.
Asserted: the trigonometry, the 16:9 panel geometry, the published panel heights, and the 15° limit in CTA/CEDIA CEB23-B. Labelled verify: the 42-inch seated eye height, which is a working default rather than a standard — the guidance is an angle and the height moves with the seating. Not published at all: a height for a screen above a fireplace, because nobody publishes one and we are not going to invent the first.
Distance and screen size are a separate question with separate sources, and we keep them separate: see the TV viewing distance calculator for the 1.2–1.6× band, the THX immersion target and the ITU acuity floor, and the TV size & viewing distance guide for the panel dimensions in full.
Put the centre of the screen at your seated eye level, which lands near 42″ off the floor for sofa viewing. That 42 is a figure we tier as verify rather than as a standard, because the published guidance is an angle rather than a height: no more than about 15° from the seated eye to the edge of the screen, per CTA/CEDIA CEB23-B. The height moves with the seating, so measure your own eye level sitting on your own sofa and work from that.
Sit on the seat you will actually watch from, in the posture you will actually watch in, and have somebody measure from the floor to the centre of your eye. That is the only number in this calculation that belongs to you rather than to the industry, and it is the one that moves the answer most. A firm dining chair and a deep sofa can differ by six inches or more, and a reclined seat changes the geometry entirely.
A 65″ panel is about 32″ tall, so with the centre at a 42″ seated eye level the bottom edge sits at 26″ and the top at 58. From eight feet back that puts the top edge 16″ above eye level, which works out at about 9° — comfortably inside the 15° guidance. The same screen at eye level needs at least about five feet of viewing distance before the top edge reaches 15°.
Nobody publishes a height for it, and that absence is the honest answer. In practice a screen above a fireplace lands with its centre somewhere around 65–75″ off the floor, which exceeds the 15° guidance from a normal sofa distance. That does not make it forbidden — it makes it a trade you should see the number for. Enter the mantel height as the screen centre and the calculator will report the actual angle rather than a verdict borrowed from somebody else's room.
It is the vertical viewing-angle limit in CTA/CEDIA CEB23-B: no more than about 15° from the seated eye to the edge of the screen. It is a limit on an angle, not a prescription for a height, which is why the same screen wants a different mounting height in a room where the sofa is six feet back and one where it is eleven. Worth noting what not to cite alongside it: the famous SMPTE 30° figure comes from EG 18-1994, which SMPTE withdrew in 2003.
A console usually puts the screen lower, which is normally the more comfortable height, and it buys you storage. A mounted panel projects only about 3″ from the wall, so mounting hands the floor back — in a tight room that is often what unlocks the walkway. If you do use a console, its top has to be wider than the panel and the set's own feet have to land on it, which is the constraint the listings bury.
The demo plan is public and needs no account. Drop a true-width panel and a sofa on a real drawing, measure the throw between them, and settle the size and the distance before the height is even a question.
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