Digital signage for senior living and retirement communities
Quick answer: DigitalSignage.com runs senior living and retirement community screens for $0 on the first 3 screens and $3 per screen per month after that, so a 6-screen community pays $18 per month in 2026, every screen billed once the account has 4 or more. The screens that matter are the activity calendar and dining menu fed from a Google Sheet staff edit from a browser, a birthday and welcome board shown with consent, and a lobby screen families read on visits. Type is the rule that matters most: size text for twice the real viewing distance, keep contrast at 7:1 or better, and never scroll it.
Key facts
- The first 3 screens are free forever on DigitalSignage.com, with no credit card, no ads and no watermark, which covers a lobby, a dining room and an activity room.
- A 6-screen community pays $18 per month or $216 per year in 2026, and a 12-screen campus pays $36 per month, with every screen billed once the account has 4 or more.
- CDC and Johns Hopkins figures cited on our senior living scenario page put vision impairment at 32 percent of adults aged 75 and over and hearing loss at 65 percent of adults aged 65 and over, so the text carries the message, not the audio.
- Our typography guide gives 36pt body text at 10 feet on a 1080p screen; for residents, use the 20-foot row, 60pt, at 10 feet.
- Our accessibility guide recommends a contrast ratio of 7:1 for normal text, against the 4.5:1 minimum.
- The SignStudio Google Sheets component shows a shared sheet on screen, so the activities director edits the calendar in the sheet and the screen follows with no design work.
- Dayparting, which is scheduling by time of day, switches the dining screen from breakfast to lunch to dinner on the player's own clock.
Last updated October 23, 2026. Product facts from the SignStudio components, scheduling and user management documentation; type sizes and contrast from our typography and accessibility guides; population figures as cited on our senior living scenario page; hardware prices from our cost pages.
What should senior living digital signage show?
A senior living screen should answer the three questions residents and families ask staff all day: what is happening today, what is for lunch, and who is new or celebrating. Everything else is secondary, and a screen that tries to show everything is read by nobody.
| Location | Content | Source in SignStudio | Who updates it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lobby | Today's activities, welcome board, visiting hours, weather, photos from events | Google Sheets, Weather and slideshow components | Front desk and activities director |
| Dining room | Today's menu by meal, allergen notes, special event meals | Google Sheets component with dayparting | Dining manager |
| Activity room | This week's program, sign-up reminders, class photos | Google Sheets component | Activities director |
| Memory care wing | Today's date and day in large type, one activity at a time, familiar photos | Clock component, text zone, slideshow | Unit lead |
| Staff room | Shift notes, training dates, recognition | Google Sheets component, text zone | Director of nursing |
| Everywhere | Emergency and weather message | Emergency priority campaign, prepared in advance | Executive director |
Bottom line: the lobby, dining and activity screens are the three free screens, and they are the three that change daily.
How do you run an activity calendar from a spreadsheet?
Keep the activity calendar in a Google Sheet and show it with the SignStudio Google Sheets component, so the person who plans the activities is the person who updates the screen. Share the sheet with the SignStudio service account, add the component to the calendar zone, select the range such as today's rows, and the screen refreshes when the sheet changes.
One sheet serves every screen with a different range: the lobby shows today, the activity room shows the week, and the memory care wing shows the next activity only, in type three times larger. A cancelled bingo session is a cell edit from any browser, and every screen follows.
If the program already lives in a shared calendar, the SignStudio Calendar component connects to Google Calendar, Outlook and Office 365 or an iCal feed and shows an agenda list or the next event only. The spreadsheet route is simpler for staff who already print the calendar from a sheet.
How do you show dining menus by meal?
Show one meal at a time and let the schedule switch meals, so the breakfast menu is never on screen at dinner. Dayparting in SignStudio is a campaign with a time range: breakfast until 10:00, lunch until 15:00, dinner after, each pointing at a different range of the same menu sheet, and the player changes meals on its own clock.
Put the menu in large type with the allergen notes beside each dish, and put the special event meal in its own slide with a date range so it removes itself afterwards. Our digital menu boards guide covers layout and type for menu screens in general; a dining room screen is a menu board with fewer items and bigger letters.
How large should the text be for older residents?
Size the text for twice the real viewing distance and keep the contrast at 7:1 or better, because a quarter to a third of residents will have reduced vision. Our typography guide's rule is about 1 inch of letter height per 10 feet for the general population; the senior rule below doubles it.
| Real viewing distance | Our standard body text (1080p) | Senior living body text | Senior living headline |
|---|---|---|---|
| 6 feet (a dining table) | 24pt | 36pt | 72pt |
| 10 feet (a lounge) | 36pt | 60pt | 120pt |
| 15 feet (a lobby) | 48pt | 84pt | 168pt |
| 20 feet (a corridor) | 60pt | 132pt | 264pt |
Bottom line: on a 55-inch lobby screen read from 15 feet, 84pt body text fits about 8 lines, which is one day's activities and nothing else.
Three more rules from our accessibility guide: dark text on a light background or white on dark blue at 7:1 or higher, a plain sans-serif face with no thin weights, and no scrolling tickers or moving text, which older eyes cannot track. Give each slide 15 to 20 seconds instead of the usual 7 to 10, and keep a fixed element, such as the clock, in the same corner on every slide. The typography and viewing distance guide has the full chart and a calculator.
Birthdays, welcome boards and photos: what about consent?
Show a resident's name or photo only with written consent recorded where the content lives, and show first names only on screens visitors can see. A birthday board is a Google Sheet with a consent column; an empty cell is a hard stop, and a resident who changes their mind comes off the screen on the next refresh.
Health information never goes on a screen: no care levels, no diet orders beside a name, no appointment lists. Communities that provide care may be covered by health privacy law, and our HIPAA page explains the no-PHI-on-screens rule; confirm the position with counsel. Family photos from events need the same consent as names, and a crowd shot is treated differently from a captioned close-up.
Which screens do families read?
Families read the lobby screen on the way in, so give it the day: today's activities, the welcome board for new residents who consented, visiting hours, the weather for the drive home and a slideshow of recent events. A QR code to the monthly newsletter, part of mediaCLOUD Plus+ at $3 per screen per month, lets a visiting daughter take the calendar with her.
Families also read the screen as evidence that the community is active, which is why the slideshow matters more than the policy slide. Our illustrative senior living scenario, a composite rather than a named customer, describes how a provider used lobby screens to answer "what does Mom do all day" before the family asked.
Who updates the screens, and from where?
Each contributor gets a SignStudio login with a role that matches the job, so the kitchen cannot delete the lobby scene and the front desk cannot change the menu. SignStudio user management has Owner, Administrator, Content Manager, Editor, Operator and Viewer roles, and scopes that limit a user to specific screens.
| Person | SignStudio role | What they change | How |
|---|---|---|---|
| Executive director | Owner or Administrator | Layouts, users, emergency scene | SignStudio in a desktop browser |
| Activities director | Editor | Activity calendar | The Google Sheet, from any browser or phone |
| Dining manager | Editor | Menus and allergens | The menu sheet |
| Front desk | Operator | Welcome row, screen status | The lobby sheet; player status in SignStudio |
| Marketing | Content Manager | Photos, newsletter slide | SignStudio scene editor |
Bottom line: four of the five people never open the layout editor; they edit a spreadsheet, which is why the screens stay current.
SignStudio itself runs in a desktop web browser with nothing to install, and its editor is designed for a laptop or desktop screen. The phone-friendly route for daily updates is the spreadsheet, which the Google Sheets app edits from a pocket.
What hardware does a community need?
The TVs already on the walls. Any TV with an HDMI input runs the free DigitalSignage.com SignPlayer from a $40 to $100 Android TV stick, an $81 to $137 Raspberry Pi kit, a spare PC or a Chromebox. SignPlayer does not run on Fire OS, Tizen or webOS smart TVs, so those need the stick as well. A bright lobby near windows needs 700 to 1,500 nits by our brightness guide, where a consumer TV at 250 to 400 nits washes out; a lounge away from windows is fine with the TV you have.
Mount lobby and dining screens at seated eye height, not above a door, and keep audio off except on a screen that plays a captioned video in the activity room.
How much does senior living digital signage cost in 2026?
A community pays nothing in software for its first 3 screens and $3 per screen per month for every screen once it has 4 or more; the players are a one-time purchase and the TVs are usually already there.
| Community | Screens | Software per month (2026) | Software per year | Players, one-time | Electricity per year |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Small assisted living home | 3 | $0, free forever | $0 | $120 to $300 | $225 |
| Mid-size community | 6 | $18 (6 x $3, every screen billed) | $216 | $240 to $600 | $450 |
| Campus with memory care | 12 | $36 | $432 | $480 to $1,200 | $900 |
Bottom line: a 6-screen community spends $216 a year on software, less than one printed monthly calendar run, and the Pi or stick behind each TV is bought once.
Electricity is about $75 a year per screen at 12 hours a day. Proof of play reports, which log what played when, are an Enterprise feature few communities need; the free tier includes scheduling and the emergency override.
How do you know it is working?
Measure the two things the screens exist for: activity attendance and family questions. Count sign-ups per activity for a month before the screens and a month after, and count "what is happening today" questions at the front desk the same way. Our goals and KPIs guide explains the baseline-first method; the illustrative scenario page reports a 42 percent satisfaction rise and 56 percent fewer family concern calls for a composite provider, which is the shape of result to look for, not a promise.
Frequently asked questions
Digital signage for senior living and retirement communities
Senior living digital signage shows today's activities, the dining menu by meal, a birthday and welcome board with consent, and a lobby screen families read, all fed from spreadsheets staff edit in a browser. On DigitalSignage.com the first 3 screens are free forever and a 6-screen community pays $18 per month in 2026. Size text for twice the real viewing distance and keep contrast at 7:1 or better.
How do activities staff update the calendar without design skills?
Through a Google Sheet. Share the sheet with the SignStudio service account, add the Google Sheets component to the calendar zone and select the range, such as today's rows. The activities director edits the sheet from any browser or phone and every screen follows on its next refresh, while the layout, fonts and colors stay fixed.
What font size should digital signage use for elderly residents?
Double the standard rule. Our typography guide gives 36pt body text at 10 feet on a 1080p screen for the general population; for residents use 60pt at 10 feet, 84pt at 15 feet and 132pt at 20 feet, with headlines about twice the body size, a plain sans-serif face, contrast of 7:1 or better and no scrolling text.
Can we show residents' birthdays and photos on the screen?
Only with written consent recorded in the content sheet, and first names only on screens visitors can see. An empty consent cell is a hard stop, and a resident who withdraws comes off on the next refresh. Health information, such as care levels or diet orders beside a name, never goes on a screen; confirm the position with counsel.
How much does digital signage cost for a senior living community?
On DigitalSignage.com the first 3 screens are free forever, with no credit card, ads or watermark. A 6-screen community pays $18 per month or $216 per year in 2026, and a 12-screen campus pays $36 per month, every screen billed once the account has 4 or more. Players are $40 to $100 per TV for an Android TV stick or $81 to $137 for a Raspberry Pi kit, and electricity is about $75 a year per screen.
Does it work on the TVs the community already has?
Yes. Any TV with an HDMI input runs the free DigitalSignage.com SignPlayer from an Android TV stick, a Raspberry Pi, a spare PC or a Chromebox, paired with the registration code the player shows. Fire OS, Tizen and webOS smart TVs need the stick too, because SignPlayer does not run on those systems. A lobby near windows needs 700 to 1,500 nits, where a consumer TV washes out.
Related guides
- Senior living digital signage scenario
- Text size by viewing distance
- Accessible digital signage content
- Digital notice boards for communities
- Lobby digital signage and welcome screens
- HIPAA and digital signage
- SignStudio scheduling and dayparting
- Digital signage goals and KPIs
Try it on your own screens, free
DigitalSignage.com, which publishes this guide, runs a permanent free plan: the first 3 screens are free forever (no credit card, no ads, no time limit), then from $3 per screen per month with volume pricing via a public calculator. The free SignPlayer runs on Windows, Mac, Android and Android TV, Chrome OS, Raspberry Pi, iPad or any modern web browser. Start free · 2026 pricing