The Complete Handbook of TV & Monitor Mounts

Chapter 1: Understanding TV & Monitor Mounts

Consider the most common object in any modern office or living room: the flat panel display. It sits on a desk, hangs on a wall, or swings out from a ceiling column. The piece of metal, plastic, and steel holding that display in the air is the TV or monitor mount. Boiled down to its essence, the mount is a structural safety device. It is a piece of mechanical engineering that must do three things simultaneously: hold a significant weight against the force of gravity, resist external forces like a door slamming or a person bumping into it, and keep the screen aligned for optimal viewing for the entire lifespan of the installation. When a mount fails to do these things, the results are not just annoying; they are expensive and dangerous. A falling 32-inch monitor can destroy a desk and injure a worker; a falling 85-inch television can injure a child or adult severely. To treat the mount as a simple accessory is to misunderstand its critical role.

The Core Function of a Mount

At its most basic level, the mount must physically attach to the structure of the building on one side, and to the display on the other. These two connections are governed by different constraints. On the building side, the mount is held by a connection to the wall substrate. The type of substrate is the single most important variable in any installation. A mount can be the strongest,