TV Not Level on the Wall? Causes and Fixes

Part of our complete guide: How to Mount a TV on Any Wall.

It is the complaint we hear most often about work somebody else did, and almost as often about a TV nobody has touched in two years: the screen looks crooked. Sometimes it is, sometimes it is not, and the useful part is that most of these can be put right in a few minutes without the screen ever coming off the wall.

1. Level and Looking Level Are Not the Same Thing

Put a spirit level on top of a screen and you learn whether it is level with the earth. That is not what your eye is doing. The eye judges the screen against the strongest horizontal line near it — a mantel, the head of a window, a chair rail, the line where the wall meets the ceiling — and if that line is not level, a perfectly level TV will look wrong beside it.

This matters before you adjust anything, because the two goals can pull in opposite directions. Decide which one you actually want: level by the bubble, or square to the mantel it sits above. In a room with one dominant line close to the screen, people nearly always prefer the second, and in a room with nothing much around the TV the bubble wins by default.

2. Most Wall Plates Have an Adjustment You Have Not Used

This is the first thing to check and the one most people never find. A lot of mounts are built with a small amount of post-installation roll — a few degrees of rotation in the bracket, or a plate whose mounting holes are slots rather than round holes. It exists precisely because no wall is perfect, and it is adjusted by loosening two fasteners, nudging the screen and snugging them again.

On a fixed plate the slots do the same job. Back the lag screws off a turn, rotate the plate to where it wants to be, and retighten. Neither operation needs the television off the wall on most mounts, and on a heavy screen it is a two-person job purely so nobody is holding a 75-inch panel one-handed. Our guide to what to look for in a TV wall mount covers which styles offer this and which do not.

3. The Single-Stud Mount That Rotates

If a wall plate is fastened into one stud only, every fastener sits on a single vertical line, and that line is an axle. The plate can rotate around it, which is why a TV that went up level can be gently crooked a month later. Three things make this likely, and all three are worth knowing:

• A narrow plate on one stud. Common on small and mid-size mounts, and the only thing resisting rotation is friction between the plate and the wall.
• Drywall anchors doing the work the studs should do. They creep under load, usually unevenly, and the screen tips toward the side that moved.
• A plate spanning two studs with only one actually hit. It looks like a two-stud install from the front, and it behaves like a one-stud install.

Rotation is not only a cosmetic problem. A plate that can turn is a plate that is not fully restrained, and it belongs in the same conversation as our guide to a TV mount pulling away from the wall. If a crooked screen also moves when you push gently on a corner, stop adjusting and find out what it is attached to.

4. When It Is the Wall Surface, Not the Mount

A wall plate pulls flat against whatever it is tightened onto. If that surface is not flat — heavy orange-peel texture, a plaster wall with a gentle belly, a seam with too much compound over it — the plate twists slightly as the lag screws come up tight, and the screen comes out of square with it. The giveaway is a plate that reads level with the screws loose and crooked once they are torqued.

The fix is a thin shim behind the low corner, so the plate is pulled onto something flat instead of being bent onto something that is not. Older Lexington houses make this routine rather than unusual, which is why our guides to plaster and lath walls and stone veneer both spend time on what the plate is actually bearing against.

5. It Was Level, and Now It Is Not

A screen that has changed since installation has moved, and that is a different question from one that was never right. Anchors creeping in drywall is the common cause and the one to take seriously. The others are mechanical and benign: a tilting mount whose two arms were hung a hole apart on the back of the television, bolts fitted into an asymmetric set of holes in the VESA pattern, or arms that were never fully seated in the plate's hooks.

That last group is worth checking first, because it is free and it is more common than people expect. Lift the bottom of the screen slightly and let it settle properly into the plate, then look again. Plenty of TVs that have been crooked for a year were simply never sitting all the way down on one side.

6. What to Check Before You Take It Off the Wall

Work through this in order and most crooked screens are solved without unbolting anything. Measure from the ceiling down to each top corner of the screen, then from the floor up to each bottom corner — that tells you quickly whether the TV is out of square or the room is. Put a level on the wall plate itself rather than on the TV, which separates a bad plate from a badly hung screen.

Then check the back: both arms at the same height, both bolts in matching holes, both arms fully seated. If the plate is level, the arms are even and the screen still looks wrong, you are looking at point one — the room — and the answer is to match the mantel rather than the bubble. If the plate itself is off and it is anchored in drywall rather than studs, that is not a leveling job and it should not be treated as one. Our guide to mounting on drywall with no studs covers what is actually holding it.

Pricing

Installation is priced by screen size: 32" $129, 43" $129, 50" $129, 55" $129, 65" $139, 75" $229 and 85" $279. Every installation covers mounting the TV, leveling, basic cable management, and all wall hardware. The mount itself is separate — flat $35, tilting $45, full-motion $125 (32–55") — or bring your own. Soundbar mounting is $40, in-wall cable concealment is $99, smart TV setup is $35 and a powerline adapter setup is $99. Service within 20 miles of Lexington is free. Richmond is our home base, so it is free too.

Leveling is part of every install we do, and it is not a line item — it is the difference between a job that looks finished and one that nags at you every evening. If a screen somebody else put up has gone crooked, tell us what it is anchored into when you call, because that one answer decides whether it is a five-minute adjustment or a re-mount. Our guide to preparing for a TV mounting appointment covers what else is worth knowing before we arrive.