Senior living digital signage for assisted living and retirement community screens
Senior living digital signage puts the day's activities, the dining menu, birthdays and staff notices on the TVs in your lobby, dining room and hallways, and changes them by meal and by day so nobody walks a USB stick around the building. Displayer runs in the browser of the screens a community already owns, includes every activity director, dining manager and executive director at no seat cost, and runs all of an operator's communities from one panel. It costs from 9 USD per screen a month on the yearly rate, so a community with eight screens pays 864 USD a year.
Build a resident screen in two minutes
The builder below is the same player a paired screen runs. Type your community name and three lines for the day, switch between landscape and portrait, and watch the loop change with its live clock. It needs no account and no hardware, and it opens on a senior living screen.
- Venue: restaurant, retail store, clinic, gym, office, school, plant floor, church, senior living or real estate office
- Orientation: landscape 16:9 or portrait 9:16
- Layout: full bleed, main plus sidebar, or a menu board in three columns
- Content: your business name and three short lines, prefilled for the venue you picked
The schedule strip underneath shows the same playlist placed on a weekly grid, which is exactly what the schedule view does inside the product.
What senior living communities put on their screens
Assisted living digital signage works when every screen answers the question a resident, a family member or a staff member has at that spot. A screen that shows the same slideshow all day stops being read within a week.
- The lobby screen. Today's date, the weather, the activities happening now and next, and a welcome for visitors and prospects on a tour. This is the screen families see first, so it should look calm and current.
- Dining room and café. Today's menu by meal, the alternate entrée, soft and texture-modified options, and the next seating time. The menu changes at breakfast, lunch and dinner without anyone touching the screen.
- Activity room and hallways. The week's calendar, outings with the bus departure time, chaplain visits, fitness classes and resident council dates.
- Memory care neighborhood. A simple orientation screen with the day, the date, the season, the weather and the next meal, in very large type, with no scrolling text and no busy animation.
- Staff break room. Shift reminders, in-service training dates, open shifts, employee recognition and the infection control notice of the week. It is the screen operators forget, and the one staff read every day.
Birthdays, new resident welcomes and photos from last week's events belong on the lobby and hallway screens. Residents look for their own names, and families notice.
One panel for every community you operate
A senior living operator with several communities has two kinds of content: brand messages that go everywhere (the flu clinic campaign, a new dining program, hiring) and local content that only one building needs (its own menu, its own bingo night).
Tag each screen by community and by place (lobby, dining, memory care, break room) and schedule against the tag. The regional flu clinic notice goes to every lobby in one step, and the Maple Grove menu stays at Maple Grove. Each community's activity and dining staff run their own screens, while the regional marketing lead keeps the brand consistent. On Professional, roles limit each person to their community and approvals let a director check a slide before it goes live.
Displayer bills per active screen and includes unlimited team members on every plan, so adding every activity assistant, dining manager and receptionist costs nothing.
Readable for residents with low vision
Older eyes need more contrast, larger type and slower pace than a retail screen. A common signage rule of thumb is one inch of letter height for every 10 feet of viewing distance; for residents with low vision, plan on roughly twice that, and keep each slide to one message.
- Use dark text on a light background or white on a deep color, never text over a busy photo.
- Give each slide at least 10 to 15 seconds, because many residents read slowly or stop to point it out to someone.
- Avoid fast tickers and flashing transitions, especially in memory care.
- Put the screen at seated eye height in dining rooms and activity rooms, where most residents read it from a chair or wheelchair.
Templates in Displayer let you fix the type size and colors once for the whole community, so a new staff member cannot shrink the menu to fit an extra line.
Weather, outbreak and safety notices on every screen at once
An override takes every screen in one community, or across all of them, and holds a single message until you lift it: a severe weather warning, a visiting restriction during an outbreak, a fire drill, a water shutoff. When it lifts, the screens return to their schedule on their own. Screens are one channel in the emergency communication plan the CMS emergency preparedness rule requires of long-term care facilities, and the override is written into the play record with the time it was shown.
Use the TVs the community already has
Any smart TV or commercial display with a web browser pairs with Displayer by opening a URL. An older TV takes a small Android stick, a Chrome device or a Windows PC as the player, typically 30 to 100 USD. There is no proprietary box to buy for each screen.
The in-room TV channel some communities run is a different setup: an encoder or modulator, installed by an AV integrator, puts a signal on the building's cable system. The HDMI output of a Displayer player can feed that encoder, but the channel hardware itself is not something we sell. Displayer runs the common area, dining and staff screens.
Senior living digital signage software compared
LifeLoop and Uniguest are built for senior living and bundle signage with calendars and resident engagement. Kitcast and Displayer are general signage platforms with published per screen rates. Rates read at each vendor's site in October 2026.
| LifeLoop | Uniguest | Kitcast | Displayer | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Price | Quoted, part of the engagement platform | Quoted | Starter 9 USD monthly or 7 USD yearly per screen | Essential 19 USD monthly or 9 USD yearly per screen |
| Player | Amazon Signage Stick or Fire TV Stick per screen | Its own box, 3 year warranty | Apple TV, Android, Fire TV, BrightSign, web | Browser on the TVs you own |
| Senior living templates | Yes, calendar sync | 6,000+ slide templates | General templates | General templates and fixed brand styles |
| Multi-community control | Yes | Yes | By plan | Tags, roles and approvals on Professional |
| What proof of play shows | Not published | Not published | Activity logs | Play record plus screenshots from Professional |
Honest notes: if you want signage, activity calendars, resident portals and family communication in one contract, LifeLoop or Uniguest is the natural buy, and Uniguest adds a touch bulletin board. Kitcast is cheaper per screen than Displayer Essential, and our Kitcast pricing breakdown has its full plan table. Displayer suits the operator who wants signage on its own, priced openly, with unlimited staff access and a screenshot record of what each screen showed.
What a senior living community pays
Billed per active screen, so a community with a lobby screen, two dining screens, an activity room screen, two hallway screens, a memory care screen and a break room screen counts as eight. Every staff member is included.
| Plan | Per screen monthly | Per screen yearly | What a community gets |
|---|---|---|---|
| Essential | 19 USD | 9 USD | Weekly schedule, templates, offline playback, unlimited staff editors |
| Professional | 29 USD | 14 USD | Meal dayparts, dated campaigns, community tags, roles, approvals, proof of play |
| Network | 49 USD | 24 USD | Single sign-on and the full audit log for large operators |
Eight screens on Essential yearly is 864 USD for the year. An operator with six communities and 48 screens on Professional yearly pays 8,064 USD. The pricing page lists every feature per plan, and what a screen network costs covers displays, mounts and installation.
How much does digital signage cost for senior living?
Signage software for a senior living community runs from about 7 to 30 USD per screen a month on platforms with published rates, while senior living suites such as LifeLoop and Uniguest quote per community. Displayer is 9 USD per screen on the yearly rate, so eight screens cost 864 USD a year, plus a 30 to 100 USD player for any TV without a browser.
What should be on a senior living digital sign?
The date, the weather and today's activities in the lobby, the menu by meal in the dining room, the week's calendar and outings in the hallways, an orientation screen in memory care, and shift and training notices in the staff break room. Add birthdays, welcomes and event photos, because residents look for their own names.
What is the best digital signage software for senior living facilities?
It depends on what you are buying, and the same answer holds for assisted living and memory care. If you want signage bundled with activity calendars and family communication, LifeLoop and Uniguest are built for senior living. If you want signage on its own with published per screen pricing, Kitcast is cheapest and Displayer adds unlimited staff, multi-community tags and screenshot proof of play.
Can we show the activity calendar on the TVs?
Yes. Build the calendar as a weekly playlist, or show the online calendar your team already keeps as a web page item, so the activity director edits one calendar. Dated items appear the week before an outing and come down after it on their own.
How big should text be on senior living screens?
A common rule of thumb is one inch of letter height per 10 feet of viewing distance, and about double that for residents with low vision. In practice that means one message per slide, high contrast, no text over photos and at least 10 to 15 seconds on screen.
Can digital signage run on resident room TVs?
Not directly. Room TVs on the building's cable system receive an in-house channel through an encoder or modulator that an AV integrator installs. A Displayer player's HDMI output can feed that encoder; the common area, dining and staff screens pair with Displayer by opening a URL.
Do we need a separate player for every TV?
No. A smart TV with a web browser runs Displayer with nothing extra. A TV without a usable browser needs one small device, an Android stick, a Chrome device or a Windows mini PC, rather than a proprietary signage box.
Can nursing home digital signage show emergency alerts?
Yes. An override replaces every screen in one community or all of them with a single message, such as a weather warning or a visiting restriction, until you lift it. The screens then return to their schedule, and the time the alert was shown is kept in the play record.
Start with the lobby and the dining room
Put today's activities in the lobby and the menu by meal in the dining room for a month. If residents and families start reading them, add the hallways, memory care and the break room. Three screens is the smallest account.