LED walls offer a unique way to add visual interest to any stage, with the massive benefits of brightness and the ability to make abstract and non-standard sized screens.

When you're looking at LED wall specs, one that will ALWAYS be mentioned is called "Pixel Pitch"...in fact, it's one of the biggest factors that can quickly double or triple the cost of an LED wall purchase!

What is pixel pitch, and does it really matter to you?  The answer - more than you might know, and it goes beyond the difference in price!

What is Pixel Pitch?

Pixel pitch is the measurement, typically in millimeters, that 2 pixels are spaced apart on an LED wall.  It is a center-to-center measurement.

Typical measurements you may see are anywhere from .9mm on a high-density indoor product to 6mm or higher on an outdoor LED wall product.

The tighter the pixel pitch, the smaller the number.  

Why Does Pixel Pitch Matter?

If all other specifications are the same, a tighter pixel pitch will look better to the eye, until the point of visual acuity where you start wasting money!

Pixel pitch describes ONLY the distance from center to center of 2 pixels, and it is often used to determine how far the viewer needs to be from the LED wall for it to look correctly. 

A lot of people - particularly salespeople of inexpensive LED walls - will quickly push a chart in front of you that shows you a pixel pitch and then tells you that at 8-10x that distance, the LED wall will look good. 

While this describes the distance of visual acuity - where you can no longer distinguish individual pixels - it does not take into account other factors like cameras!  For spaces with cameras, it gets more complex, but even without cameras, it's not really correct in most cases.

As you can see in the image above, a properly designed LED wall with the correct pixel pitch works well both on camera and to the naked eye.  Any guess to what pixel pitch it is?

Besides Pixel Pitch, What Other Pixel-Spacing Metrics Matter?

Pixel pitch is a good starting point, but if you're comparing 2 products, you also want to look at the mask ratio, or the amount of "black" between each pixel. 

Some LED products, for example, may have a 2.9mm pixel pitch.  Product "A" uses a SMD2020 LED and product "B" uses a SMD1515 LED.  

Let's look at the math - in product "A", the LED is 2mm x 2mm, and in product "B", the LED is 1.5mm x 1.5mm. 

While this may not seem like much, it really can be.  In this case, the "mask ratio" of the 2 products is found by taking the pixel size / pixel pitch.

Product A would be 2/2.9 = .68 mask ratio, or 68% of the space being filled with LED and the remaining being black.

Product B would be 1.5/2.9 = .51, or 51% of the space being filled with LED - a pretty significant different from 68%!

The mask ratio - or the amount of blank space vs. lit pixels - is less often talked about, but does matter.  Most quality products in the same price range will likely have very similar mask ratios between identical pixel pitches.  However, when comparing models from 2 different brands, you may find differences like these that aren't apparent when you only look at the pixel pitch and refresh rate.

Mask ratios will shift between different pixel pitches - tighter pitches often have lower mask ratios, but that doesn't really mean they look worse, as the pixel pitch is lower.

But, the key distinction to look for between products is pixel size - cheaper panels may have smaller LED's, which in turn make a identical pixel pitch look much worse!

How Do You Know What Pixel Pitch to Buy?

The "quick math" tells us that the visual acuity distance - or the distance at which a person with 20/20 vision can distinguish separate pixels, is around 10x the pixel pitch, expressed in feet. 

Yes - that figure is very convenient, and tells us that a 2.6mm wall has no appearance of separate pixels at 26', a 2.9mm wall at 29', a 3.9mm wall at 39'....but is it correct?

On a technical basis, yes, it is true, this is the distance where people cannot see the difference in-between pixels.  But does it actually matter?

LED walls are everywhere, and not really a foreign concept to people, so we don't necessarily need to aim for visual acuity.  People see these in their daily lives, and are used to the look of individual pixels, it's not disturbing.

In that case, we have a couple of aims with a LED wall and pixel pitch - we want it to not be distracting to look at, and we want it to look good on camera.

LED walls can look really good to the eye at about 4ft x the pixel pitch - so for a 2.9mm wall, we recommend having viewers no closer than about 12' from the wall.  You can still see pixels, but it looks very good with little separation.  This is the figure we use when we're not using camera's in the space, or if the wall will not appear on camera.

While it would be convenient to simply have a chart that listed the minimum distance from the first viewer to the LED wall, and maybe the visual acuity distance, we typically start the conversation asking about how you will use the wall.  One of the most important questions is - "Will there be cameras?"

Camera's and Pixel Pitch 

When you use cameras in an event space...and if you're not, your audience is....you REALLY want to stick to that 4ft x Pixel Pitch minimum rule of the distance between any object you want to focus on and the LED wall.   As long as the wall is reasonably close to a stage and may be seen in either your camera shots OR audience photos/videos, you should be factoring it in.

If you don't think about the camera's, you'll see the moiré effect on camera - these are the dancing zebra stripes that you have probably seen before on videos.  It happens when a camera gets the LED wall pixels and masking in sharp focus, as you can see on the image below:

 Will it guarantee you'll never see moiré?  No, with any LED wall, you can focus a camera on it and get yourself some moiré.  The trick is to ensure the camera does not make a sharp focus on the LED wall itself, and keeping people on stage 4ft x the pixel pitch from the wall generally gets you in the ballpark. 

The brightness of your screen and content, aperture of your camera lens, focal point, and more all affect how good you are able to make your wall appear.  Shallower depths-of-field almost always make LED walls look better on camera, but may not always be the desired look for the camera shot!

If you don't have cameras, OR the wall is not in the camera shot, then you can typically use a wider pixel pitch and still get great results!  Don't be afraid to use a wider pixel pitch on side-screens that won't appear on camera.  But, for walls that are in the stage shot on camera, you generally want to keep people a distance downstage of the wall, or use a tighter pitch.  It'll make your stage look great to both the audience and the viewers on IMAG and on streams/recordings!

When you do need an LED wall, where do you turn?  At Above AVL, we LOVE to help people find the perfect LED wall for their space - what makes us different is that we work with multiple LED wall manufacturers to find the best fit in both form, function, and budget for your space or portable setup.  We can provide the full, turn-key LED wall and any ground support, rigging, and anything else that you need, even working with an installer if needed. 

Most importantly, we only work with suppliers that maintain strict quality standards and warranty standards - as going cheap with an LED wall can make the next 10 years of your life incredibly frustrating and painful, and can cause the usable life of your LED wall to only be a few years!

To get started, fill out our LED wall calculator to get a rough idea of products and cost that may work for your space!, or browse LED wall packages here!