Digital Menu Board Sizes, Resolution and Text: The Specs That Decide If It Gets Read
Most menu boards fail on one of three numbers: the wrong resolution, text too small for the queue, or a layout that gets cropped. Here are the actual pixel sizes, the text rule, and a Canva setup that does not come out blurry.
A menu board can be perfectly designed and still fail, because design and legibility are different problems. The customer is standing three metres away, deciding in about eight seconds, often while queueing. If they cannot read the price, the screen has done nothing.
Direct answer: design landscape boards at 1920 x 1080 pixels and portrait boards at 1080 x 1920. Make the smallest text at least 25mm tall on screen for every 3 metres of viewing distance, which on a 43 inch 1080p screen is roughly 40 pixels minimum, and 60 or more for prices. Keep a 5 percent margin clear on all sides. Export as PNG for text-heavy boards, JPG for photos, MP4 for video.
The Pixel Sizes
| Screen | Design at | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Standard TV, landscape | 1920 x 1080 | The default. Works on almost every TV sold in Malaysia |
| Standard TV, portrait | 1080 x 1920 | Design it portrait. Do not design landscape and rotate the file |
| 4K panel, landscape | 3840 x 2160 | Only worth it if customers stand close. At queue distance 1080p is indistinguishable |
| Two screens side by side | 1920 x 1080 each | Design as two separate boards, not one wide image split down the middle |
Design at the screen's real resolution. Designing small and letting the player stretch it is the most common cause of soft, slightly fuzzy text, and it is the thing customers register as "cheap looking" without being able to say why.
The Text Rule
The practical rule used in signage is that text should be about 25mm tall for every 3 metres between the screen and the reader. Measure the distance from the screen to where the queue actually stands, not to the counter.
| Viewing distance | Minimum text height | On a 43 inch 1080p screen |
|---|---|---|
| 2 metres | ~17mm | ~35 pixels |
| 3 metres | ~25mm | ~50 pixels |
| 5 metres | ~42mm | ~85 pixels |
Prices should be larger than item names, not the same size. The price is what people are actually looking for, and making it the biggest element on the row is the single fastest improvement to most menu boards.
How Many Items Per Screen
Fewer than you want. A board with 24 items is a wall of text that nobody reads in a queue. Six to eight items per screen, rotating through two or three screens on a loop, gets read far more.
If you have a large menu, split it by category and let it rotate: drinks, mains, sets. Give each slide 8 to 12 seconds. Faster than 8 and people miss it, slower than 15 and they stop watching.
Margins and the Crop Problem
Some TVs still apply overscan, which quietly crops a few percent off every edge. If your price sits 10 pixels from the right edge, it can simply disappear on a particular set.
Keep the outer 5 percent of the design free of anything important. On 1920 x 1080 that means nothing critical within about 96 pixels of the left or right edge and 54 pixels of the top or bottom. Background can bleed to the edge, text and prices should not.
Setting Up Canva So It Is Not Blurry
Canva is what most Malaysian shop owners already use, and it works well for this if you set it up once.
Create a custom size, not a preset: 1920 x 1080 pixels for landscape, 1080 x 1920 for portrait. Type the numbers in pixels, not millimetres, because a print-sized document exported to screen is where blur comes from.
When you export, choose PNG for boards that are mostly text and JPG for photo-heavy ones. PNG keeps text edges crisp. If Canva offers to compress, decline.
Build one board as a template with your fonts, colours and layout locked, then duplicate it for each new promo. It turns a 30 minute job into a 3 minute one, which is the difference between a board that stays current and one that shows a Ramadan promo in August. Step by step in how to put a Canva design on your shop TV.
Colour and Contrast
Screens in shops compete with daylight and downlights. Light text on a dark background reads better in a bright room and produces less glare than a full white board. Avoid thin fonts and avoid pure red text on black, which fringes badly on many panels.
If the screen faces a window or a bright shopfront, panel brightness matters more than design. Look for 300 nits or more, and check it at 2pm rather than at night.
A Quick Test Before You Commit
Put the finished board on the screen, then stand where your customers actually queue and give yourself eight seconds. If you cannot find a specific price in that time, the board is too busy or the text is too small. It is a cruder test than any spec sheet and it is more reliable.
Related reading: the full digital menu board setup guide, five things F&B owners wish they knew first, and menu boards for cafes and kopitiams. Layar takes Canva exports directly and lets you schedule boards by time of day, and you can try it on one screen free.