How to bid an LED wall

An LED wall bid is the sum of its parts — panels, processing, rigging, labor, power, transport, and spares. Price each line honestly and the margin holds. Guess a per-square-foot rate and it won’t. Here’s the breakdown crews actually use.

The seven lines in every LED wall bid

Whatever the show, the cost rolls up from the same components. Miss one and you’re absorbing it.

Panels (the wall itself)

Rental of the cabinets for the run, priced per panel or per square foot/meter per day or per week. Pixel pitch drives this more than size — tighter pitch costs more per square foot.

Processing & control

Video processor(s), scalers, redundant backup, and the control position. A fixed pixel budget per processor sets how many you need.

Rigging & structure

Motors, truss or ground-support, headers, and the qualified rigger. A flown wall costs more than ground-stacked and needs an engineered sign-off.

Labor

Load-in/out crew, an LED tech and a processor op for the show, and overtime. On union jobs this is the single largest line — often half the total.

Power & distribution

Distro, cable, and sometimes a generator. Size to the wall’s peak draw plus headroom, never the average.

Transport

Trucking the cases in and out, fuel, and the road cases themselves.

Spares & redundancy

Spare panels, receiving cards, and data/power runs. Budget a spare percentage — a dark tile mid-show is the thing clients remember.

What drives the price

Two walls of the same size can differ by a multiple. These are the levers that move the number most.

Pixel pitch

The biggest price lever. A 1.9mm wall can cost several times a 3.9mm wall of the same size, because you’re renting many more (smaller, denser) cabinets.

Total square footage

More panels = more rental, more processing, more rigging, more labor. Scales almost everything at once.

Flown vs. ground-stacked

Flying adds motors, rigging labor, points, and engineering. Ground-stacking is cheaper but eats floor space and sightlines.

Run length & turnarounds

A one-day corporate keynote and a two-week residency price very differently per day. Multi-city tours add strike/reload labor each stop.

Union vs. non-union labor

Local agreements set rates, minimum calls, overtime, and meal penalties — model them up front, not after the invoice.

Start from the spec, not a guess

The fastest way to a defensible bid is to nail the physical spec first: panel count, total resolution, power draw and circuits, weight and rigging load, processor and port count, pixel pitch and viewing distance. Once those are real numbers, the cost lines fall into place — you know how much power distro to rent, how many processors to bid, and whether the wall needs a rigger.

Type a cabinet name and a wall size and get the full spec in seconds — power, circuits, weight, rigging, processors, ports, viewing distance, and spares.

Open the LED wall calculator →

Five mistakes that blow the margin

Pricing power off the average draw instead of the peak — then tripping breakers at full white.
Forgetting the processor budget — discovering on site you need a second processor you didn’t bid.
Quoting a flown wall without the rigging labor and engineering sign-off.
Zero spares. One dead tile with no replacement is a visible failure.
Treating union labor as an afterthought — minimum calls, OT, and meal penalties can swing the margin.

FAQ

How much does it cost to rent an LED wall?

There is no single number — cost is driven by pixel pitch, total square footage, whether the wall is flown or ground-stacked, the run length, and labor (union vs. non-union). The biggest single line on most bids is labor, often around half the total. Build the bid from its parts — panels, processing, rigging, labor, power, transport, and spares — rather than guessing a per-square-foot rate.

What is the most expensive part of an LED wall bid?

On a typical show it is labor — load-in/out crew, the LED tech and processor operator, and overtime — which frequently runs close to half the total, especially under a union agreement with minimum calls and meal penalties. Panel rental is the next largest line, and it climbs steeply as pixel pitch gets tighter.

How do I figure out how many LED panels I need?

Divide your target wall size by the panel’s cabinet dimensions to get panels wide × high, then multiply for the total count. From there you can derive total resolution, power draw, weight, and processing. An LED wall calculator does this automatically when you type a cabinet name and a wall size.

Should I bid a flown or ground-stacked wall?

Ground-stacked is cheaper and simpler but uses floor space and can block sightlines. Flown clears the floor and improves the look but adds motors, rigging labor, hang points, and an engineered sign-off (ANSI E1.21). Bid the option the room and budget actually call for — and never quote a flown wall without the rigging cost.

How many spare LED panels should I include?

Carry a spare percentage of the wall plus spare receiving cards and data/power runs. The exact figure depends on the panel and the stakes of the show, but bidding zero spares is the classic mistake — a single dark tile mid-show is exactly what a client remembers.

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