A light emitting diode (LED) video wall that reads perfectly in a hotel ballroom can be the wrong screen entirely once you move it into a car park. Same panels, same crew. Different job. Outdoor LED screen hire changes the brief in ways that have very little to do with picture quality and a lot to do with wind, water, daylight and the ground the screen is standing on. If you have only ever booked a screen for an indoor conference, the differences start earlier than you would expect, and most of them are settled before anyone specifies a panel.
Outdoor LED screen hire is a structural question before it is a picture question
Indoors, a screen either hangs from the venue’s rigging points or stands on a ground support frame on a flat, dry floor in still air. Outdoors, that same screen becomes a temporary structure that has to stay upright in weather, on ground that is rarely level and often soft.
The Health and Safety Executive is direct about this. Its guidance on equipment used outdoors to support loudspeaker clusters and lighting says you should take account of foreseeable wind loading and any other relevant factors such as ground strength and slope, and that purpose-designed outdoor systems use a base of sufficient size, with sufficient ballast, to provide a factor of safety against overturning. It also warns that equipment intended for indoor use is not generally designed to take account of wind loading, and flags the out-of-plumb effects caused by erecting equipment on uneven ground.
In practical terms, the frame, the ballast and the wind management plan get specified alongside the screen, not after it. A large panel array is a sail. The engineering that stops it moving is a bigger part of the job than the panels are, and it is the part that decides whether the screen you want will fit the site at all.
We would rather look at the site plan than the screen size first. Specifying kit before you understand what the event is for, and where it sits, produces the wrong kit. Our outdoor stage and rigging teams work this out together, because outdoors they are the same problem.
Weatherproofing is an ingress protection rating with two halves
Outdoor panels carry an ingress protection (IP) rating. Manufacturers explain it simply: the first digit covers protection from solids such as dust and the second covers protection from liquids such as water, with IP65 the usual recommendation for open-air positions exposed to rain and hostile weather.
Two things get missed. First, rental panels are often protected to different standards front and rear, and the rear is where the connectors and power distribution sit. Ask for both figures, not one headline number. Second, the panels are only part of the installation. Processors, distribution boxes and cable ends need covering too. HSE guidance on electrical safety at events says equipment exposed to rain or other adverse conditions should be protected with suitable and sufficient covers, enclosures or shelters.
Brightness is only half the daylight problem
Screen brightness is measured in nits, a measure of light output per square metre of screen. Indoor panels sit low because they are competing with house lights. Outdoor panels are built much brighter: Absen’s outdoor rental series, for example, is specified at at least 4,000 nits, in pixel pitches of 2.9mm and 3.9mm.
The half nobody asks about is the sun’s position. A screen pointed into low afternoon sun will look washed out however bright the panels are, because the light is landing on the face of the screen rather than coming from it. Orientation does more for legibility than the last few hundred nits, along with any shading from buildings or trees. Work out the time of day your content matters most, then get the compass direction of the screen onto the site plan.
Content matters as well. Outdoors, thin type and pale backgrounds disappear. Heavy strokes and hard contrast survive. Pixel pitch, the distance in millimetres between one LED and the next, can usually be coarser than indoors because the audience stands further back, which is worth knowing before you specify a fineness nobody will see. We cover the pitch and viewing distance relationship in our guide to LED screen hire for conferences.
Power and cable runs are where outdoor jobs get underestimated
Indoors you plug into the building. Outdoors you are usually building a small electrical installation from a generator or a temporary supply, then running cable across ground that people will walk on.
HSE guidance on electrical safety at events is the page to read before you sign anything off. It says cables should be selected and specified to meet electrical safety standards and to withstand any unusual environmental or adverse weather conditions, and routed to minimise tripping hazards or mechanical damage. Cable ramps or similar can protect cables running overground. Where cables go overhead, a height of not less than 5.8m is advisable. Cable joints should never be left underground.
This is the point where splitting the work across suppliers starts to hurt. If the screen comes from one company, the staging from another and the power from a third, the joins between them belong to you. We supply LED video wall, staging, outdoor stage, rigging, audio visual (AV) equipment and technical crew from one source, nationwide from our Manchester base, so those joins are ours to solve rather than yours to chase.
The get-in is longer, and the weather gets a vote
The get-in, the period when kit arrives and is built, is a different exercise outdoors. There is no goods lift and no loading bay, and the floor is whatever the site gives you. Ballast has to arrive with the frame and be craned or tracked into position. Builds usually happen in daylight, often a full day earlier than an equivalent indoor job, and the de-rig, taking it all back down, has the same constraints in reverse.
Weather then gets a say in the schedule. A wet build is slower, and there is a wind speed above which panels should not go up at all. Someone has to own that decision, with a threshold agreed in advance and a named person who makes the call on the day. Agree it when you book, not at seven in the morning with a lorry waiting.
Monique Iball, writing about an annual conference and awards ceremony we delivered, described a fast and efficient setup and a polite crew. Indoors that reads as a pleasant extra. Outdoors it is the whole margin, because an orderly build is what buys back the hours the weather takes off you.
What to settle before you book
- A site plan with the screen position and the direction it faces.
- Whether the support frame will be ballasted or anchored, and what the ground under it is.
- The IP rating of the panels, front and rear.
- Where power comes from and how cable will be routed and protected.
- The furthest and nearest viewing positions, which set the screen size and the pixel pitch.
- The wind threshold, and the named person who decides.
- The get-in and de-rig windows, and vehicle access to the position.
Answer those seven and the specification writes itself. Skip them and you will be having the conversation on site, in the rain, with a crew standing still.
Talk to us about your outdoor screen
If you have an outdoor event with a screen in it, or you are not yet sure a screen is the right answer, we are happy to look at the site with you before anything is specified. Send us the plan and the running order through our contact page or email hire@eventproductiongroup.co.uk, and we will tell you what the site will and will not allow. If you are still choosing a supplier, our guide to the questions to ask an AV supplier is a good place to start.
