Visible light communication (VLC) systems are inherently signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) limited due to link budget constraints. One favourable method to overcome this limitation is to focus on the pre-log factors of the channel capacity. Multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) techniques are therefore a promising avenue of research. However, inter-channel interference in MIMO limits the achievable capacity. Spatial modulation (SM) avoids this limitation. Furthermore, the performance of MIMO systems in VLC is limited by the similarities among spatial channels. This limitation becomes particularly severe in intensity modulation/direct detection (IM/DD) systems because of the lack of phase information. The motivation of this paper is to propose a system that results in a multi-channel transmission system that enables reliable multi-user optical MIMO SM transmission without the need for a precoder, power allocation algorithm or additional optics at the receiver. A general bit error performance model for the SM system is developed for an arbitrary number of light-emitting diodes (LEDs) in conjunction with pulse amplitude modulation. Based on this model, an LED array structure is designed to result in spatially separated multiple channels by manipulating the transmitter geometry. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Optical wireless communication’.