American DIY videos assume one wall: drywall on timber studs. Queensland builds with at least seven, and three of them will drop a TV mounted the YouTube way. The pillar guide, wall by wall.
By the Topline Antennas crew · Published 24 August 2026 · Brisbane, QLD
Before anything else
Knock on it. Hollow drum: gyprock over studs (timber or steel). Dead thud: masonry of some kind, or gyprock glued direct to it. Look at the age and suburb. Pre-1946 timber home: VJ tongue-and-groove boards likely. 1950s-70s brick: could be veneer or double brick. Post-2000 estate: gyprock on timber or steel stud, with Hebel between townhouses. Apartment: concrete or block, almost always.
The magnet trick: a fridge magnet dragged along the wall snaps to screws on steel studs at regular spacing, and to nothing on timber. The window-reveal trick: a deep reveal (190 mm+) suggests double brick or block; a shallow one suggests veneer or framed construction. Still not sure? Photograph the wall and a window reveal - identifying walls from photos is something we do daily on the phone.
Wall by wall
The standard case, and the only one the YouTube tutorials get right. The sheet holds nothing; the bracket coach-screws into studs at 450 or 600 mm centres and must span two. Find studs with a finder, confirm with a test probe where the bracket will hide the hole.
Common in townhouses and post-2005 builds. The magnet test finds it. Thin-wall steel will not hold a coach screw the way timber does - use toggles rated for steel stud, and give large screens a spanning plate across three studs. Full-motion arms need the most care here.
Looks like brick inside and out, but the inner leaf you would drill is a decorative skin in many configurations - the structure is the frame behind it. The correct fix is through to the framing, or into the brick with sleeve anchors only after confirming the leaf is sound and the fixing avoids mortar joints.
Structural masonry - the strongest mounting there is, done right. Sleeve or screw-bolt anchors into the brick face or the block’s solid webs, never the mortar, never a hollow core without the right anchor. The cable is the real challenge: no cavity means surface duct or a chased channel.
Aerated concrete: light, thermally brilliant, and it crushes under standard expansion anchors. AAC-specific fixings only, more of them, torqued gently. TVPro publishes an $80-120 surcharge for Hebel walls; ours is $50-100, and this paragraph is why one exists at all.
Tongue-and-groove hoop pine, 12 to 19 mm, often with no cavity and sometimes no studs where you expect them. Boards alone bow under a cantilever arm within months. The load must reach the studs behind - or a mounting board spreading across several - and original VJ deserves heritage-grade care with every hole.
Learned from repair calls
Every dropped-TV call we have attended traces to one of four mistakes: hollow-wall anchors in gyprock alone (holds for months, fails on a bump), a full-motion arm on a single stud (the leverage works the fixing loose), anchors in mortar joints (mortar is the weakest part of any masonry wall), and standard plugs in Hebel (crushed powder within a season). None of these look wrong on day one - that is the trap.
The economics are lopsided: doing it right costs a published $150 to $360; a dropped 65-inch OLED costs two thousand, plus the wall repair.
Know your wall now? See the price for your screen and wall type → or call 07 XXXX XXXX.