Size for distance / 6 feet
What size TV for 6 feet away?
From 6 feet (72 in, 183 cm), a 44-inch screen fills the SMPTE 30° everyday view and a 60-inch screen fills THX's 40° cinema view. Sizes in that range listed here: 48", 50", 55", 58".
The numbers for 6 feet
| Basis | Screen size | Screen width | Reading it |
|---|---|---|---|
| SMPTE 30° (mixed viewing) | 44" | 38.6 in | The screen fills 30° of your view — the comfortable everyday figure. |
| THX 40° (cinema) | 60" | 52.4 in | The screen fills 40° — immersive for film, a lot for news and sport all day. |
| 4K's own pixels visible from | 92" | 80.4 in | Only screens this big show 4K's pixels to 20/20 eyes from 6 ft — the point where 8K would start to help. |
| 4K looks sharper than 1080p from | 46" | 40.2 in | On smaller screens, 1080p already reaches the limit of 20/20 vision from 6 ft, so 4K adds no visible sharpness. |
At 6 feet the point where 4K looks sharper than 1080p, 46 inches, falls between the SMPTE and THX sizes: at the everyday size the difference is marginal, at the cinema size it is visible. 4K's own pixels only become visible from 6 feet on a 92-inch screen.
What a 6-foot room usually looks like
Six feet is a typical apartment bedroom or a narrow den. A wall-mounted screen gains you the depth of a stand, which at this distance can be a meaningful share of the room.
6 feet is a typical bedroom or a compact living room — a loveseat facing a wall unit. Wall space, not the standards, is often the limit here: a 60-inch screen is 52.4 inches wide, so measure the wall between windows and doors before settling on the larger figure.
Compared with 5 feet, every extra foot of distance adds about 7 inches to the SMPTE size and 10 to the THX size. Both sizes are within the range of TVs listed here.
Choosing within the range
The two standards bracket a sensible choice rather than giving one answer. Lean toward 44 inches for a room used for news, sport, gaming at a desk distance, or a bright room where a huge black rectangle dominates when the set is off. Lean toward 60 inches for a room built around films. Your eyes, not the chart, settle it: if you turn your head to follow the action, the screen is past 40° for you; if you lean forward to read captions, it is under 30°.
Measure from where your eyes are when seated to where the screen will be — not from the wall. A TV on a stand sits several inches in front of the wall, and a full-motion mount can bring it forward a foot or more. For comparison, the SMPTE distance for a 55-inch is 7 ft 5 in and the THX distance for a 65-inch is 6 ft 6 in.
TVs to look at for 6 feet
- 48-inch: 5 models, e.g. LG OLED48C6PUA, Samsung QN48S85HAEXZA
- 50-inch: 7 models, e.g. LG 50UT7550AUA, Samsung UN50M70HAFXZA
- 55-inch: 25 models, e.g. LG 55LX7BPUA, LG 55UA7700PUB
- 58-inch: 1 model, e.g. Samsung UN58U8000HFXZA
Sizes are geometry from the viewing angles and the 20/20 acuity limit cited by Wikipedia's Optimum HDTV viewing distance article, for a 16:9 screen. Viewing distances are geometry from published viewing angles: a 16:9 screen's width is 0.8716 x its diagonal, and the distance at which it fills a horizontal angle A is width / (2 x tan(A/2)). Resolution distances use the 20/20 acuity limit of one arcminute per pixel. The same formulas reproduce the reference figures quoted in the source (30 degrees = 1.6264 x diagonal; 31.2 degrees for 1080p; 58.37 degrees for 4K).