The wall decides everything else: the fixings, the time, whether cables can be hidden, and how much the job costs. Florida makes this interesting because four quite different wall types sit within a few miles of each other.
Timber-framed drywall
Studs at 16-inch centres, plasterboard over them, hollow cavity behind. Standard in anything built here since the 1980s, and the fastest wall to work with.
The mount bolts into the framing, and the hollow cavity is what makes proper cable concealment possible: a rated in-wall power kit puts an outlet behind the screen and nothing shows. This is the only wall type where cables genuinely disappear.
Concrete block
Solid block, usually with stucco outside and either a thin plaster skim or furred-out drywall inside. Extremely common across Pinellas and coastal Manatee, and typical of mid-century houses.
Block holds a television better than timber does, but it needs masonry anchors, a hammer drill and carbide bits — never the plastic plugs in the bracket box. And nothing gets fished through it, so cables run in a painted raceway on the surface. Anyone promising invisible cables inside a block wall is planning to cut a channel into it, which is a different trade.
Careful with furred-out block: the anchor has to pass through the drywall skin and bite into the block behind. Stopping in the skin is how a mount ends up hanging on plasterboard alone.
Plaster over wood lath
Old Northeast in St. Pete, Seminole Heights and Hyde Park in Tampa — anything from the 1920s.
Plaster is brittle. Drilled dry and fast it cracks outward, and the crack does not stop at the hole. It gets drilled slowly, without hammer, and the fixing goes into the framing behind rather than into the plaster itself. Studs in these houses sit at unpredictable spacing, so a stud finder alone is not enough; you confirm with a small probe hole where the bracket will cover it.
Post-tension concrete
Downtown condos, mostly St. Pete and Tampa. Slabs and some walls contain steel tendons under tension, and hitting one is not a minor mistake — it is structural damage and a serious safety problem.
In practice this means anchor depth is limited, and drilling into ceilings or structural walls is often prohibited by the building outright. Most towers also want a certificate of insurance and have set hours for noisy work. We check with the building before booking rather than turning up and finding out.
Telling them apart
Knock. Hollow and drum-like means timber and drywall. Dull and solid means block or plaster over something solid.
Then look at the drill dust from a small test hole: white powder is plaster or drywall, grey grit is concrete or block, and pale flecks with fibres means lath behind.
You do not have to do any of this yourself. Say what your house is and roughly when it was built when you call, and we will tell you what the wall almost certainly is and what that means for the price — masonry walls carry their own line item, and it is quoted before anyone comes out.