Wall Panel 32H Oak: planning a slatted wall behind a TV

A slatted oak wall behind a television is a job with plenty of ways to end up slightly wrong. Nearly all of them come down to two numbers on the Wall Panel 32H listing: the board is 60cm wide, and it is 1.7cm thick.

Sixty centimetres is a coarse module

Each board covers 60cm of width and the full 240cm of height, and they come four to a pack covering 5.76m². That makes a pack exactly 2.4 metres of wall. The coarseness matters because a wall is almost never a multiple of 0.6: a 3.2 metre chimney wall wants five boards and 20cm of something else, which means one board ripped down its length. Decide at the planning stage whether that part board sits in the corner, or whether you split it so a matching part board lands at each end and the wall reads symmetrically. On a slatted face the second option usually looks deliberate and the first looks accidental, unless the corner is genuinely out of view.

Setting a television against the board grid

Work out the centre line of the television first, then set the boards out from it rather than from a corner. A large screen covers roughly two boards, so the screen will either be centred on a board or centred on the joint between two, and those look different once the screen is off. The tidiest answer is usually the panelled area centred on the room and the screen centred on that, which is a decision you make with a tape measure and a pencil before anything is fixed.

Then plan the cables. Any route behind the panel has to come out at a point you chose, because once the boards are on, moving it means taking one off. If the screen is going to stand on something instead of hanging, the shop lists TV units separately, and a unit in front of a slatted wall is often the easier answer in a rented room.

The bracket, and the 1.7cm the wall gains

The description makes a point of this board being thicker than standard, at 17mm. In front of a television that has two consequences. The screen sits 1.7cm further into the room than your bracket's figures suggest, so check a cantilever arm's measurements against the finished panel face rather than the bare wall. And the bracket itself needs to reach the structure behind the panel. The listing does not say whether anything can be fixed through these boards, or what they will hold, so ask the shop before you buy the bracket. It is the single most important question on a media wall and the one nobody asks until the drill is out.

Oak in the 32 and the 31

This oak board has a near twin: Wall Panel 31H in oak carries the same written specification down to the millimetre, so the difference between them is the slat profile, which neither listing describes in words. Compare the photographs. Within the 32 group, Wall Panel 32F in grey oak and Wall Panel 32K in shadow oak are the other tones in the same group. Neither listing describes its finish beyond the name, so the photographs are the only guide to how either would sit against a dark floor.

What the listing leaves for the shop to answer

• Fixing a bracket or a shelf through the board, as above.
• Slat width, slat spacing and the colour of the felt behind the gaps.
• Whether the three-sided veneer is timber or a wood-effect finish.
• Any measured absorption figure. Sound absorption is described but no number is quoted.

Count the boards, round up to packs, and add the edge trim so the exposed end of the run is finished properly. The full range is in slat and acoustic panels, and delivery is free within 50 miles of the Glasgow store and £50 beyond it. Once the centre line is marked and the bracket question is answered, order Wall Panel 32H in oak for the whole wall in a single order.