How to mount a TV on the wall

Mounting a TV looks like a twenty-minute job until you are standing in front of the wall with a drill. Most of the work is not the drilling — it is finding the wooden studs hidden behind the drywall, choosing hardware that will hold the weight for years, and dealing with the cables so the whole thing does not look like a science project. Here is what the job actually involves.

What you need

If you already own all of this, the job is a pleasant afternoon. If you are buying a stud finder, a drill and a socket set for one TV, add up what that costs before you decide.

Finding the studs — the part that matters most

Behind the drywall in most homes is a frame of vertical wooden studs. Those studs are what hold your TV. The drywall itself holds almost nothing.

1. 1

   Studs sit 16 inches apart

   In most homes studs are spaced 16 inches from centre to centre — sometimes 24. This is the single most useful fact here: once you have found one stud, measure 16 inches sideways and the next one is almost certainly there. Confirm before you drill.

2. 2

   No stud finder? Use a magnet

   Drywall is screwed to the studs. A strong magnet dragged slowly across the wall will stick where a screw is — and where a screw is, there is a stud. Mark two or three finds vertically in a line and you have the stud.

3. 3

   The outlet trick

   Electrical boxes are almost always nailed to the side of a stud. Find an outlet, and a stud runs up the wall right beside it — usually to one side by about half an inch.

4. 4

   Knock and listen

   Tap along the wall. Over the empty cavity it sounds hollow; over a stud the sound goes flat and solid. Useful for confirming, unreliable on its own.

Picking the mount and getting the height right

Check two numbers before buying a bracket: the VESA pattern on the back of your TV (the spacing of the four threaded holes, in millimetres) and the weight the mount is rated for. A fixed mount sits closest to the wall and is the simplest. A tilting mount helps if the TV ends up above eye level. A full-motion arm swings out — convenient, but it puts far more leverage on the wall, so the studs matter even more.

The cables — where most guides go quiet

Once the TV is on the wall, two cables have to get from it to your equipment: the signal cable, and power. These are not the same problem, and the difference matters.

The signal cable (HDMI and similar) can be run inside the wall — but it has to be cable rated for in-wall use. That rating is printed on the jacket. The ordinary HDMI cable that came in the box is generally not rated for it.

That last option is the easy one, and it is what a lot of people choose once they hear the rest: a surface raceway — a slim plastic channel that sticks to the wall, holds both cables, and can be painted to match. No cutting into drywall, no code questions, and it takes minutes.

Brick, concrete and plaster

Everything above assumes a standard drywall-over-wood-studs wall, which is most homes. If your wall is brick or concrete, there are no studs to find — you drill into the masonry itself with a hammer drill and masonry anchors. It holds extremely well when done right, but a regular drill will not get through, and a wrong-sized hole in brick cannot simply be filled and re-drilled next to it. Plaster over lath is its own case again: the plaster crumbles if you rush it.

How long it actually takes

For someone who has done it before, with the tools already in hand: about an hour for a straightforward drywall mount, longer if the cables go inside the wall. For a first time, budget an afternoon — most of it goes on finding the studs, deciding the height, and the cable run.

None of this is beyond a careful person with an afternoon. The question is whether the afternoon plus the tools is worth more or less to you than having it done. If you would rather it was just finished — and level, and holding into the studs — that is what we do.