The screen in your lobby is showing last winter’s hours
Digital signage projects almost never fail at installation. The screen goes up, the content looks good, everybody is pleased.
About this piece
- Article
- Buildings & A/V
- Written by Nicholas Backwell · Founder, Redsilicon
- Updated 2026-08-24
They fail in month three, when the person who was going to update it got busy, and nobody else knows how. By month eight the screen is showing something wrong, and a wrong screen is worse than no screen because it tells every visitor that nobody here is paying attention.
The short version
- The hard part is not the screen, it is deciding who updates it and how often.
- Content that never needs changing is more valuable than content that needs weekly attention.
- A consumer TV in a public space will eventually show a streaming advert or a settings menu.
- Screens facing a window need far more brightness than a living room TV has.
- Vertical orientation reads better for most signage and most people forget it is an option.
Decide who owns it before you buy anything
This is the whole article, really. Everything else is detail.
Before a screen is ordered, answer three questions in writing.
Who updates it? A specific person, by name, not a department. If the answer is “whoever has time,” the answer is nobody.
How often does it need to change? Be honest. If the real answer is twice a year, design for twice a year and stop pretending you will produce weekly content.
What happens when that person is away or leaves? A second person who knows the login. This is where most signage dies, because the one person who knew how has moved on and the password went with them.
If you cannot answer all three, buy a screen that shows something permanent instead. A well-designed static board with your services, your hours and a QR code beats a dynamic system nobody feeds.
Design for the update cadence you will actually sustain
The most successful small-business signage I have seen mixes two kinds of content.
Evergreen. Hours, services, contact details, safety information, a welcome message. Set once, correct for years. This should be most of your screen.
Automated. Content that updates itself with no human involved: a live weather panel, a calendar feed pulling from your existing calendar, a queue or job status pulled from a system you already use, an Instagram feed. This gives the screen the appearance of freshness without adding a job to anyone’s week.
Manual, minimal. One zone for the thing that genuinely changes. A current promotion, a monthly safety topic, a welcome for a visiting client. Small enough that updating it takes two minutes.
The mistake is building a screen that is 80% manual content. That is a part-time job you have accidentally created.
Commercial display, not a television
Worth being specific about, because the price difference tempts everyone.
A consumer TV is designed for a few hours a day in a dim living room. A signage screen runs ten or more hours a day, sometimes near a window, often in portrait orientation.
The differences that matter in practice:
Rated operating hours. Commercial panels are rated for extended daily operation. A consumer TV run twelve hours a day will not last as long, and warranties often exclude commercial use, so the failure is also uncovered.
Brightness. A living room TV is far too dim for a bright lobby or a window-facing position. Signage panels are considerably brighter, and this is the specification people most often get wrong. A screen you cannot read in afternoon sun is a dark rectangle.
Portrait orientation. Commercial displays are designed to be mounted vertically. Consumer TVs are not, and their cooling assumes horizontal mounting.
No smart TV in the way. This is the one that embarrasses people. A consumer TV wants to show its own home screen, its own app recommendations, and occasionally an advert. It may also power itself off after a period of no remote input, which it will interpret as nobody watching. A commercial panel starts on the input you tell it to and stays there.
On orientation: portrait suits most signage content better, because a list of services or a menu is a vertical thing, and because a portrait screen in a corridor takes less wall. Worth considering before defaulting to landscape.
The practical installation issues
Power and data behind the screen. Both need to exist where the screen mounts. A cable dangling down a lobby wall undoes the point of the exercise.
Structural mounting. Into studs or solid backing. A large panel is heavy, and in a public space it is also a liability question.
Heat. A recessed screen in a cabinet with no airflow will fail early. Displays need space to breathe, particularly in portrait.
The media player. Something has to drive the screen. Some commercial displays run signage software internally, which removes a box and a point of failure. Otherwise it is a small player behind the screen, and it needs network access. Wired is better than wireless here, because a signage player that loses Wi-Fi shows an error message to your customers.
Scheduled power. Screens should turn themselves off overnight. This extends panel life and saves electricity, and it is a setting rather than a purchase.
What this means for your building
A restaurant or food service counter in Oshawa running menu boards has the highest-value case, because prices and specials change and printed boards are slow and expensive to reprint. This is also the case where brightness matters most, since counters are usually well lit.
A clinic in Whitby using a lobby screen for hours, wayfinding and health information is mostly evergreen content with a small automated panel. Set it up properly once and it needs almost nothing.
A warehouse in Courtice putting a screen in the lunchroom for safety topics and production numbers benefits most from automation, pulling numbers from a system rather than having a supervisor type them. That screen may also be the training and meeting display the rest of the week.
A retail space wanting screens in a window needs to be told honestly that window-facing signage requires high-brightness panels built for it, and that a standard commercial display behind glass in afternoon sun will disappoint.
What to do about it
- Look at your existing screens today and note anything out of date. That is your evidence for how this goes.
- Name the person who will update it, plus a backup, and write both down.
- Split your intended content into evergreen, automated and manual. If manual is most of it, redesign.
- Check the light in the position at the brightest time of day before choosing a panel.
- Decide orientation before mounting, since it changes the panel and the bracket.
- Get power and network to the position during installation, not afterwards.
Digital signage with commercial displays, a content system and branded templates is one of the things we set up, with the templates built so that updating content does not mean redesigning it.
Want this scoped for your site?
Tell us the building and what you’re trying to achieve. We’ll tell you what it takes, and whether you actually need it.
Before you call
Can we just use a TV and a USB stick?
You can, and for a single screen with content that changes twice a year it works. What you give up is scheduling, remote updates, and knowing whether the screen is actually showing anything right now.
How many screens do we need?
Usually fewer than first planned. One screen people actually look at beats three nobody notices. Start with the position where people are already waiting.
Who designs the content?
Somebody has to, and it should be templated so that updates are text changes rather than design work. A screen that needs a designer for every update stops being updated.