Location Mistakes: How Poor Screen Placement Hurts Performance

If you’ve ever led a digital signage installation, you know this moment well: the screens are mounted, the software is live, the content looks sharp, but something doesn’t look right. That’s the moment when you think “We need to move that screen a little higher…or lower.”

It might be a minor fix if only one display needs adjustment. But if several screens were placed without considering industry best practices for screen placement, this could lead to a major mistake with significant financial repercussions.

Screen placement is often treated as a secondary detail, decided late in the process or driven by architecture, aesthetics, or convenience. Yet across every vertical (retail, QSR, corporate, education, healthcare, transportation), placement directly impacts screen performance.

In this article, we’ll discuss common placement-related mistakes in digital signage installations and how to address them without disrupting project execution.

The Human Reality of How People See Screens

People don’t experience digital signage the way they view drawings or renderings. They experience it while walking, waiting, ordering, navigating, or multitasking. Attention is limited. Line of sight matters. Anything that requires extra effort to see is often overlooked.

Screens mounted too high, placed off to the side, or positioned near bright windows may technically “fit,” but they fight human behavior. From a project management standpoint, this is a simple truth: a hard-to-view screen is functionally broken, regardless of how good the content or technology may be. Industry guidance consistently recommends placing screens at eye level.

Common Placement Mistakes That Repeat Across Industries

Regardless of vertical, the same issues appear repeatedly:

• Screens mounted above natural eye level to “keep them out of the way.”
• Placement dictated by power or conduit instead of visibility
• Glare caused by windows, skylights, or overhead lighting
• Screens positioned after the key decision moment
• Visual competition with architectural elements or signage clutter

These choices are rarely intentional. They’re usually the result of tight timelines, site constraints, or late-stage change requests.

How to Push Back on Bad Placement (Without Slowing the Project)

This is where an experienced project manager or installation partner can make a difference.

Pushing back on your installer’s display placement suggestions doesn’t mean saying “no.” It means reframing the conversation so performance, not preference, remains the priority.

Anchor discussions in outcomes such as readability, glare, and viewing comfort rather than aesthetics. Walk the space from the viewer’s perspective and ask simple questions like, “Can someone read this comfortably from here?” Seeing the issue in real time often resolves debates faster than emails or markups.

When possible, offer alternatives rather than roadblocks (e.g., slight height adjustments, angle changes, or lateral shifts that stay within scope). Validate placement early through site walks. A few minutes upfront can prevent costly rework later.

Why Placement Becomes an Operational Issue

Poor placement doesn’t just hurt engagement; it creates operational friction. Difficult-to-read screens slow decision-making, increase confusion, and reduce message recall. In high-traffic environments, even minor delays compound quickly, often leading to missed performance KPIs and frustrated operators and customers.

For those in charge of digital signage projects at large organizations, this often leads to change orders, site revisits, and frustrated stakeholders, far more disruptive than addressing placement correctly the first time.

To conclude, we leave a few takeaways for digital signage project leaders. First, the most successful digital signage projects aren’t defined by how many screens go up, but by how well those screens perform once the project is complete.

Second, in digital signage, placement isn’t a cosmetic detail; it’s infrastructure. Get it right, and operations work better. Get it wrong, and even the best technology struggles to deliver value.