Count the elements that need a permanent place: a status grid, a set of team swimlanes, a calendar strip, a reference document. Each of these needs enough space to stay legible on its own, and cramming several onto too small a board is usually what makes teams feel a magnetic wall “isn’t working” when the real issue is undersizing. A useful exercise before ordering is to sketch the intended layout on paper at roughly the scale of the wall, which usually reveals whether the planned elements will actually fit comfortably.

A team of 4-6 people running a single kanban board typically needs at least 2-3 linear metres of width to keep columns readable without overlap. Larger or multi-project teams (8-15 people) generally need a full wall, often 4-6 metres, to hold parallel workstreams without one project’s cards crowding another’s. Beyond 15 people sharing one wall, most teams are better served by splitting into two boards rather than one oversized surface that becomes hard to read from a distance. These figures assume a single active layout; a team running two distinct planning systems side by side should budget space for both independently rather than trying to compress them into the smaller of the two ranges.

A board that’s wide but short forces everything into a narrow horizontal band, which is uncomfortable to read standing close and often unreadable from across the room. Aim for enough height that the bottom row of cards sits above waist height and the top row stays within easy reach without a step stool, roughly 1.2 to 2.1 metres from the floor for most adult users. Rooms with lower ceilings sometimes need to trade height for width to hit the same total surface area, which is worth discussing with whoever is specifying the board before a final layout is fixed.

Teams that size a board exactly to today’s needs often outgrow it within a year as new workstreams get added. Where the wall allows it, sizing 20-30% larger than the current requirement avoids a second retrofit project later, which typically costs more than including the extra surface at the outset. If the wall genuinely can’t accommodate extra width, consider whether a second, smaller magnetic panel elsewhere in the space could absorb future growth instead.

For help sizing a magnetic wall to your specific room and team, our large magnetic board.