How to choose the right pixel pitch
Pixel pitch decides how close your audience can stand, how much the display costs and how much power it draws. A working method for getting it right the first time.
What pixel pitch actually measures
Pixel pitch is the distance, in millimetres, from the centre of one LED pixel to the centre of the next. A 1.9 mm display packs roughly 277,000 pixels into every square metre; a 10 mm display carries 10,000. Everything else — viewing distance, resolution, cost, power — follows from that number.
The mistake most projects make is choosing pitch by what looks impressive in a showroom rather than by where people will actually stand.
The viewing distance rule
A practical starting point: minimum comfortable viewing distance in metres is roughly equal to the pixel pitch in millimetres. A 2.6 mm display reads cleanly from about 2.6 m; a 6 mm display from about 6 m. Optimal distance sits at two to three times that figure.
Buy the pitch your audience needs, not the pitch the brochure celebrates.
Indoor: boardrooms, lobbies, retail
Boardrooms and control rooms put viewers at 2–4 m with dense text and data — this is fine-pitch territory, 0.9 to 1.9 mm. Lobbies and retail flagships tolerate 1.9 to 2.6 mm because content is video and viewers move past rather than stare. Above 3 mm indoors, individual pixels start to show at conversation distance.
Outdoor: façades and DOOH
Outdoor viewing distances start at 10 m and often exceed 50 m. A 6.9 or 10.4 mm pitch is not a compromise here — it is the correct engineering choice. Brightness, weather sealing and serviceability matter far more than density once the audience is across a street.
Cost and power scale with the square
Halving pixel pitch quadruples pixel count. Moving from 3.9 mm to 1.9 mm roughly quadruples LED count per square metre, with matching increases in driver electronics, power consumption and heat. Specify the tightest pitch the viewing distance requires — and no tighter.
A five-minute method
- 01Measure the closest realistic viewing position.
- 02Divide that distance (m) by 1.5 to get a maximum pitch (mm).
- 03Check content type: text and data push you tighter; video lets you relax.
- 04Check ambient light: outdoor and daylit spaces need brightness before density.
- 05Confirm budget against the pitch squared.