An arrangement of spacer posts in a flat panel display. The spacer posts maintain a fixed separation between a back plate and a face plate. The back plate includes one or more electron emission sources. Phosphors or other electro-optic material are distributed among a plurality of pixel areas on the face plate. The pixel areas are arranged in distinct groups, where each group contains N adjacent pixel areas. Each pixel area includes an area free of phosphor material. Within each group of N pixel areas, the respective phosphor-free areas of the N pixel areas are contiguous so as to form a combined phosphor-free area equal to or greater than the transverse cross-section of one end of a spacer. Consequently, a spacer can be attached to the face plate at each combined phosphor-free area without disrupting the uniformity of the distribution of phosphors on the face plate.