Were you ever told that you’ll get square eyes if you sit too close to the TV? Turns out it wasn’t just something your mum said to make you move further away, there was a reason and it has to do with TV pixels. We’ll explain that in a second, but the TL;DR is that it all comes back to the distance in which you should sit from your TV. Something relevant as ever with more and more TVs getting bigger and bigger in size.
In 2023, the pixels on a TV are so small that manufacturers can pack millions upon millions of them into a display. But when you were likely told you’ll get square eyes, the pixels were much larger. It used to be the case that if you sat too close to the TV, given the pixels were so big (and there were far less of them), they were more noticeable, increasingly so as you got closer. They were also square. If you sat too close to the TV, you would notice all the square pixels, causing your brain to try and fill the data in that’s missing. With the pixels so big, this was a lot of strain on your eyes trying to make sense of the image, especially over a long period of time.
Hence the remark of getting square eyes if the distance you were sitting from the TV wasn’t enough.
Despite this not being the case anymore, the idea is still relevant as ever: you’ll still cause strain if you’re sitting too close to the TV. While it’s tempting to just purchase the biggest TV on offer, if you’re thinking about upgrading your TV, you’ll want to consider viewing distance.
How close should you sit to the TV?
According to Samsung, when you sit in a cinema, the screen takes up around 40 per cent of your field of vision when you’re seated in one of the rows after the first flight of stairs. To recreate that at home, things become a little more complicated.
One popular rule of thumb is simply using one foot of viewing distance for every 10 inches of diagonal screen size. With ‘feet’ not really being something we use for measurement in Australia, unless talking about our height, this isn’t super easy, but it’s relatively simple to convert measurements. For example, a 50-inch TV would be best 5 feet away from your lounge, a 60-inch 6 feet away, 70-inch 7 feet, and so forth. According to Samsung, for an 85-inch TV, you’ll want to be 2.6 metres away (that’s 8′ 5″, matching up with that rough rule of thumb).
But things also vary based on what type of TV you’re watching.
For a 4K TV, Sony recommends that the distance you sit be 1.5 times the vertical height of the television. So, if your TV is 49 inches tall, you’ll want to sit at least a metre away. Sitting at this distance means your eyes won’t be able to distinguish individual pixels, which creates a more realistic image.
This alters slightly for HD televisions, where Sony recommends a distance of three times the screen size. For standard-definition TVs, six times the vertical height of the screen is recommended.
Home theatre experts, THX, have a different opinion saying that you should divide the distance between your couch and TV by 0.835. Unfortunately, for us metric users, you’ll need to convert this into inches to get the relevant screen size.
By these measurements, two metres from your TV comes out to roughly 78 inches which equates to a 90-inch TV.
If you’re looking for an easier way to judge viewing distance rather than whipping out your measuring tape, Hisense’s product specialist, Chris Mayer, gave us a simpler option.
“If you’re standing far enough away from the TV and you don’t have to tilt your head to see the left and right of the image, then that’s a good size TV. As soon as you have to start turning your head to see an image you’re going to get viewer fatigue, and you’ll have an issue.”
“Physically going into a store and figuring out how far you can stand back from [a TV] is what works for me.”
These rules are more like guidelines and there is no viewing distance that’s mandated for health or safety by the government – although, like any screen, you should take regular breaks from it. Picking the perfect television is already a hard decision and, while viewing distance is important, we’re cognisant of the fact it may not alter your decision too much. But it’s worth considering, still.
This article has been updated since it was first published.