How to Choose the Right LED Screen for a Church

There are many churches that have over 50,000 attendees ever week. These are all people who have come to receive the word of God from their favorite and most trusted pastors. Without technological advances such as LED display screens for churches, pastors would find it extremely difficult to minister to all these people at once.

Thanks to display technology like LED panels, churches around the world are now well equipped and set up to receive more and more attendees every Sunday. However, just because you can get your hands on LED screens doesn't mean that they are the right ones for your church.

A subtle science goes into choosing the right video displays for specific churches. Here are some tips on how to choose the right LED screen for a church.

Tips on Finding the Right LED Screen for Your Church

Churches, especially large ones, need to find the right way to enhance the worship experience for their congregation. Outstanding LED screen displays will grab the people's attention at the back and foster an air of focus throughout the entire church. 

The right LED screen brings church events such as religious concerts, ceremonial gatherings, song lyrics, and charity work to life. Using giant LED screens enhances the audiovisual experience within the church and keeps the audience captivated and engaged.

Here are some factors you need to take into account when choosing the best LED displays for your church:

The Display Environment

The first thing you need to consider is the environment in which the LED screens or LED walls will be used. If your church is like most churches, it probably has lots of huge windows that let in quite a bit of ambient light. Because of this light pollution, you’d have to cover the windows when using a projector and make sure the lights are dimmed down as well.  However, that’s not the case for LED screens.  Because LED walls are so bright, all of this ambient light is not match for the viewing quality of our screens. 

Another factor that must be considered is the structural integrity of the stage or mounting points where the LED screen will be installed.  If you intend to have the LED wall on the floor, ideally it won’t be installed on a temporary stage.  However, because our LED panels are so light, most temporary stages can bare the weight easily.  Also, if you intend to hang the LED screen from your ceiling grid or truss structure, you’ll just want to consider the weight load it’s rated for.  Again, since our panels are so light, this is hardly ever a barrier. 

Pixels and Panel Size

If you have determined that an LED screen is the right display solution for your church, which it usually is, you also need to consider factors such as panel sizes and pixel pitch. Typically, LED displays are made up of 0.5m square panels with thousands of RGB LEDs.

Pixel pitch, which is the distance between the centers of any two adjacent LEDs, is what matters the most. We usually recommend a 2.9mm or 3.9mm pixel pitch for indoor video walls for churches. 

Since LED walls are typically made up of individual panels, you don't have to strictly stick to the 16:9 aspect ratio. Because our LED panels are modular, you can configure your LED display in almost any size you can imagine!  You can even set up and reconfigure you’re display in a matter of an hour or so to give your worship and sermons a new feel month to month. 

The Viewing Distance

This is a crucial point. The idea is to bring the service and church ceremonies closer to every member of the congregation, including the people at the very back. There's no point in having a tiny LED video wall that only people at the front can appreciate. You’ll want to make sure the LED screen is large enough to accommodate everyone from the front row all the way to the back row. 

Another important factor as far as viewing distance is concerned is how far the LED video wall or LED screen will be from the front row. This will help decide what pixel pitch would be ideal for your church.  Again, we usually recommend a 2.9mm or 3.9mm pitch for most church applications.

For instance, a 3.9mm LED screen should ideally be viewed from a minimum of 13ft away. A 2.9mm screen should ideally be viewed from a minimum of 10ft away.  In most instances, the front row is well beyond these distances which will allow for high-definition viewing for your entire congregation.

LED Video Wall Brightness

LED video walls tend to be quite bright, and this might be a good or a bad thing depending on what else you have going on in your house of worship. In most cases, it’s a great thing!  LED video wall brightness is one of the key reasons it’s clearly the better choice over standard projectors that get diluted because of ambient light.  On top of that, church LED video walls are a favorite with many pastors because they look great on camera due to the awesome brightness and high refresh rate of our LED panels. 

However, too much brightness has the potential to overwhelm other light sources in the church, depending on how the screens are set up. The good news is that this brightness can be customized to your specific church setting by an experienced LED technician from Ultravision LED Solutions.  With our experience, we can help ensure your LED video wall is calibrated to the correct brightness during our installation phase.

Budget

This is always a factor, and when it comes to LED display technology, the cost gets much higher the more the pixel pitch decreases.  Because of that, a 2.9mm or 3.9mm LED screen is the sweet spot for church LED video walls and will allow you to get the most bang for your buck.  

Because people believe LED screens to be so expensive, they immediately look over this cutting-edge technology and opt for old-school projectors.  The problem here is that once you start considering things like ambient light, the type of projector you will need for your space and the huge ugly screen, the costs start piling on even for projectors.  Ultravision LED Solutions offers very affordable options that are topnotch quality.  You’ll be surprised to see just how affordable our church LED video walls are.  

Customizing LED displays for your church is the only way to go. Doing it correctly is a whole different story, but that’s where Ultravision LED Solutions comes in to guide you through the process. Contact us for any questions regarding LED screens for churches, you won’t be sorry.