Portrait or landscape digital signage? What we learned from thousands of screens
SignageSpace · 2026-10-15T18:12:16.401Z · 6 min read
13% of screens in our customer sample are portraits and the portrait share among cafe screens is more than four times that of corporate screens. Here’s what that means for your next menu board.
13% of screens in our customer sample are portraits and the portrait share among cafe screens is more than four times that of corporate screens. Here’s what that means for your next menu board.You’ve picked the spot for your screen. Perhaps it’s beside the coffee machine, behind the counter, or in the window where passersby can see today’s special. Now comes a surprisingly useful question: should it sit horizontally or vertically?For a cafe or restaurant owner, that choice affects how your menu fits, how much room you have for photographs, and whether customers can read prices without stepping out of the queue. We wanted to understand what businesses actually choose.Across thousands of paired screens, 13% are portrait: taller than they are wide. Among screens that checked in during the last month, that figure rises to 17%. Landscape remains the more common orientation. But look at where portrait screens appear, and the story becomes more interesting.Cafe screens have more than four times the portrait share of office screensWe grouped screens by the sector their accounts selected at signup.SectorPortrait shareCafe16.4%Restaurant15.5%Education4.2%Corporate3.7%Other11.2%In this sector breakdown, 16.4% of cafe screens are portrait, compared with 3.7% of corporate screens; a difference of about 4.4 times. Restaurants sit close to cafes, at 15.5%.That doesn’t mean most cafes choose portraits. Even here, landscape is far more common. It means vertical screens account for a noticeably larger share of café and restaurant installations than office installations in our sample. Why might that be?Think about the wall beside your counter and what you want to put on it.A coffee menu and a wide wall ask for different layoutsImagine a simple cafe menu;EspressoFlat whiteCappuccinoToday’s cakeA vertical layout gives that list room to run down the screen, with prices alongside it and a heading above. It may also suit a narrow wall segment beside the till. Now imagine a restaurant me...