Before you choose a TV stand, you make a quieter decision first: stand, or a bracket bolted into the wall? Most guides skip past it. It is the more interesting question, so here is an honest look at both, from a company that makes the floor version.
A mount is a commitment to one spot. A stand is a piece of furniture that comes with you.
What the floor gets you
You do not put a hole in anything. If you rent, that is a deposit and a repair on the way out. Even if you own the place, a mount is one height, one wall, until you patch and paint.
A stand moves. Rearrange the room, change sofas, take the TV to a new flat: the stand comes with you. Cables run a few centimetres to a socket instead of being fished through plasterboard. And you get an actual object in the room, wood and steel with some warmth, rather than a screen floating on a blank wall with a bracket hidden behind it.
The renter's version of this argument is no holes in the wall.
When a wall mount actually wins
We are not going to pretend the floor is always right. If your only good wall is above a fireplace and the floor below is taken, mounting may be the only option, and we wrote the honest fireplace answer. In a very small room with no floor to give, up on the wall saves the space. A bedroom you watch lying down, a kitchen you glance up at: a mount goes where a low stand cannot.
If that is your room, mount it. For most living rooms, none of those apply.
The part nobody mentions
People hang mounts at eye level while standing, in an empty room, before the sofa arrives. Then they sit down, and the screen is higher than their eyes, and every film is a slight chin-up. A screen wants to sit where your eyes land when you are seated, which for most sofas is low. A low stand puts it there by default. A wall mount only does if you fight the standing instinct. Height is the longer note.
Where we land
The floor, low. EASEL if you want hardwood: walnut on black steel, or beech on white steel, 42 to 75 inches, VESA 200x100 to 600x400. STUDIO if the screen has to roll: all steel, locking casters, 55 to 70 inches. Neither needs to be wider than the TV. The screen hangs from the brackets. The stand can be narrower than the panel and still be the right object. Cabinet advice that says otherwise is about a different piece of furniture.
If your room is one of the exceptions above, mount away. If it is not, the floor has a better argument than it usually gets.
