Choosing the right size for your digital signage screen can be tricky. There are many variables involved.
The most important ones are:
- Information density; how much content are you planning to show on your digital signage screen at once?
- Viewing distance; from what average distance will your audience be viewing your digital signage content?
With a bit of math, you can devise the right size for your digital signage screen. To help you with this, we created a tool that lets you:
- Set the estimated number of text lines that you like to show; as a rule of thumb:
- headlines contain, on average, three lines of text
- news articles contain, on average, ten lines of text
- menu boards have, on average, twenty lines of text
- set the average viewing distance of your audience
Based on your input, we calculate three screen sizes for you. Pick one that best suits your intent:
- The maximum impact of your message
- Just well, a readable sign
- The maximum amount of information in a limited space
Note that you can switch between horizontal and vertical screen orientation at the bottom or change the viewing distance unit from meters to feet.
Read time
Next to screen size, we also show you an estimate of the average read time of a full screen in seconds. This time indicates how long a page with certain content should remain visible before transitioning to the next page.
Traveling speed
The above tool assumes that your audience is standing still. But what if your digital signage screen is outside and you also want to capture the attention of people walking, cycling, or driving by? It’s hard to give an exact measure of how big your screen needs to be for certain speeds because it also depends significantly on if your viewer is moving right up to the screen or if they are passing it by in the distance. So you will have to do some math yourself to find how much time the viewer will have the screen in sight at a certain speed and angle of movement and if this sufficiently covers the required read speed.
More factors to consider
Of course, the screen size is just one property of a screen that you must consider when choosing. In the next blog post, we will look at several other factors when selecting the best digital signage screen for your location.