Prior to the pandemic, indoor LED walls were becoming increasingly common in corporate lobbies, boardrooms, and executive briefing and customer experience centers. The increase in pixel density has enabled a clearer, brighter picture that creates an immersive viewing experience for many applications.

As an expensive feature of the physical office, LED walls may now seem like a questionable investment, but one can also argue that the evolution of the workplace environment will actually increase their demand, continuing the existing trend. It’s impossible to say exactly where commercial office space will go in the coming months and years. In this post, we consider how LED walls solve some of the pain points faced by building owners and companies and establish good practices for making the most of the investment.

Attracting People and Tenants

An LED wall in a ground-floor building lobby will catch people’s attention from across the street and draw them into a building. It creates a sense of wonder and excitement around the entry experience. LED walls sometimes go into the base building to make it more appealing to potential tenants. With a smaller tenant pool as organizations scale back their real estate investments, an LED wall is a feature that will certainly differentiate buildings in the eyes of prospective tenants. It is important to establish the intended effect of the content to be able to define the screen location relative to the intended audience, and to inform the content creation direction, whether it be images, effects, or text.

Expanded View Lines 

As compared with projection systems, an LED wall can increase the physical area from which a presentation can be clearly seen. This feature enables participants of large meetings and gatherings to space out to appropriate distances.

Reconfiguring Real Estate Investments

As some organizations scale down real estate investments, the purpose and configuration of the physical office will evolve. If it’s less about desk space, perhaps it’s more about attracting employees to special internal events and creating high-end brand experiences for potential clients and customers — along the lines of the customer experience or executive briefing center. LED walls are a central feature in both of these scenarios.

How TEECOM Can Help

Indoor LED walls have gone from an ‘emerging’ to an ‘evolving’ technology over the past two years, as demand has increased and price has decreased. For example, in 2018, sourcing was the biggest challenge. With supply chains broader, and quality more reliable, the challenge in 2020 is coordination among the disciplines implementing these projects. That’s where TEECOM provides value.

These are not out-of-the-box products: in addition to the art of creating the content, there is an art to engineering the video wall. It requires intensive coordination with architects and mechanical, structural, and electrical engineers. Manufacturers’ online configurators will output mounting and wiring details, but they may not fit the requirements of the project. While a manufacturer’s standard might place the top of the screen six inches from the ceiling, the architect may want it two or three inches or half an inch from the ceiling.

Because of the evolution of the product, the form factors have changed, and it’s critical to understand their effect on how the equipment attaches to the building. General contractors are constantly asking us, “Can I move this backbox two inches this direction?” The structural element is key for longevity and reliability. Opinions differ about whether to use plywood versus a steel frame structure.

Implementing an LED wall requires the integrated building design approach that TEECOM brings. We can be most helpful by engaging directly with the content producer, whether it’s an artist like Refik Anadol, or the owner, so we can help design the video wall infrastructure to work for the content and the space at the minimum cost.

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