- We've all been there, new apartment,
new house, maybe new TV, the living room is all set,
maybe that TV's even on a stand on a media console,
but you can't help but feel like it's just make the room
look so much better if that TV was on the wall.
TV's aren't light really and they're expensive,
so it can be a bit daunting to think about
attaching them with a few bits of metal to the wall.
On top of that, what mount do you use?
How much do they cost?
Why are some of them so freaking expensive?
Are you kidding me?
Thing is, it doesn't really have to
be that hard or that expensive.
I just moved to a new apartment in Brooklyn.
I bought a new TV and I started looking up mounts.
I stumbled upon ECHOGEAR on Amazon and seeing the price
and the crazy amount of five star ratings,
I decided to look into it.
Turns out, they even have a mount finder on their site,
which means I didn't have to guess.
I just put in my TV, it told me the options I had,
and then you just decide, as you do
with most mounts out there, which type of mount you want.
Fixed for a slimmer look, tilt that allows you
to tilt up or down generally,
and that's usually used to get rid of glare
or just kind of angle the TV a bit better,
and full motion allows you to tilt side to side,
up and down, sometimes rotate it, et cetera.
Once you know the mount for your TV,
you need to first determine what type of wall you have.
The three most popular options are
drywall with wooden studs, drywall with metal studs,
and concrete or brick.
The procedure's basically the same regardless
with just differences in what you'll need.
Things you'll need no matter what: a level,
tape measurer, drill, screwdriver, and a wrench
if the mount has bolts instead of screws.
Then, if you have a studded wall, you'll need a stud finder.
Otherwise, if it's concrete or brick,
you'll just need a concrete bit
and you don't need the stud finder
since you can put it basically anywhere in the wall.
And now, for wooden studs, which is
probably the most popular situation,
the mount will usually come with the
screws and bolts needed, so that's all set.
If you have metal studs, though, like I do
and some newer buildings will,
you'll just also need some toggle bolts.
Now, these go into the metal stud and then lock behind it
to distribute the weight better,
since metal studs are usually quite thin.
Firstly, figuring out the height and centering on the wall.
There's a ton of sites out there that tell you
different inches, like 40 inches off the ground
or six feet or whatever.
Frankly, I think the best place for your TV
is gonna be at eye level and I mean eye level
from wherever you plan to watch it from.
So, that means if it's from the couch,
measure up you your eye level while
sitting up straight on the couch,
and that's where the center of the TV should go,
and maybe even just a few inches higher than that,
just to kinda make it a little more
symmetrical on the wall, but that's about it,
so long as it's a few inches off of your eye level,
you won't have to tilt your neck up or down while watching,
which gets really painful and is the
main thing we want to avoid here.
Once you have the height figured out,
the general rule, pretty much across the board,
for horizontally is to try and just
get it centered on the wall.
Now, this might be a little different depending on
your living room or wherever you plan to put the TV,
but in my opinion, generally, this is probably
the cleanest look you could go for.
To do that, just measure the length of the wall
and divide that number by two, then using a pencil
or something you don't mind drawing on the wall with,
put a small dot at that point, at the height
of a few inches above your eye level
and that's where our TV needs to be centered on.
And now, we can find those studs.
You simply drag the stud finder slowly along the wall
until it lets you know there is a stud,
then continue to find another and another,
just to confirm that it's accurate.
Now, depending on the TV and bracket size,
you might only need to drill into one stud,
but what I've found is that most brackets
and most TV's require two.
So, we'll find that two that are closest to our centered dot
and mark where those are.
One last thing we need to avoid before we start drilling
are electrical wires in the wall
for potentially painfully obvious reasons.
Now, in most modern places, these metal conduits
run horizontally about two feet from the floor
to minimize the drilling that might happen to them,
but sometimes, you'll find vertical ones
and the stud finder might just think
it's just another wooden stud.
Thankfully, most stud finders have an AC indicator
that will light up if it senses
an electrical current inside the stud.
If that happens, it's best to just find
a different stud, unfortunately.
You can also generally, but not always,
find them by just looking at light switches
and power outlets as if they are running vertically,
they'll be running along those most of the time.
Once you figure out the studs and
that there are no electrical wires in the way,
we're going to focus on the TV for a sec.
Most mounts come in two parts: a TV bracket
and a wall bracket that just makes the entire process
make way more sense than if they didn't.
First, we attach the TV bracket to the back of the TV
while it's laying facedown on something soft.
I used my rug.
We don't wanna scratch the front of the TV, obviously.
The TV and the TV brackets will line up their holes,
since we used a tool to help us determine
the mount we needed, of course,
and then, using the screws it came with, and making sure
to center the brackets on the back of the TV.
Next, we can focus on the wall.
Now, the ECHOGEAR mount came with a rather cheeky
drilling template that makes life a lot easier.
If your mount didn't come with that,
you'll have to simply hold up the actual mount
against the wall to find where to drill
and I recommend having someone help you, just in case.
So, the idea is we need to line up four of the holes
on the bracket, two on either side, in this case,
onto the studs we found with the center centered
where we marked the center of our TV to go.
You'll then mark these holes using the same pencil
or whatever you used before and we can
put the drilling template bracket aside.
Now, the fun part. (drill whirring)
We take our drill, using the drill bit
for our screw size and drill our four holes
into the two studs for this particular mount.
Once we have our four holes, we can put
our mounting bracket over them and then
put in the screws it came with for a wooden studded wall
or in my case, put in the toggle bolts and their screws
if you have metal studs.
Once that is snug to the wall,
we can take the TV, again, two people recommended,
to then hang the TV onto the bracket where it will slide on.
Once that's locked in place, you're all set.
And there you go, guys.
Hope that helped some of you mount a TV.
Again, this will work regardless of what mount you got,
but I used ECHOGEAR, and honestly,
I really enjoyed it, it worked well,
it's a solid mount, and it's super cheap,
and has really good ratings.
Anyway, if you wanna check out the mount I used,
click the link below to be taken to that.
Otherwise though, again, I hope this
helped somebody somewhere.
If you liked this video, though,
please thumbs up it or share it, it is greatly appreciated.
If you want more videos like this,
please check out my YouTube channel
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As always though, regardless, thanks for watching.
(upbeat music)