Abstract We systematically study the mass spectra and their two-body hadronic decays
of the beauty-charm meson family considering the coupled channel effects.
 Our results can good explain the observed $B_c$ meson spectrum and the prediction of the mass spectrum for unobserved beauty-charm mesons can be tested in future experiments. Compared with previous studies, we systematically study the
beauty-charm meson family within the coupled channel components. The $1S$ state in beauty-charm meson family has few percent of coupled channel component, while the $2S$, $1P$ and $1D$ states have more than ten percents. The two-body hadronic decay widths of the $2^3P_2$ state is narrow as 3 MeV. The two-body hadronic decay widths of $3^1S_0$, $3^3S_1$, $2^3D_1$, $2D$, $2D^\prime$, and $2^3D_2$ are about 109 MeV, 67 MeV, 60 MeV, 57 MeV, 201 MeV, and 76 MeV, respectively. The mixing effects between $B_c(n{}^3L_L)$ and $B_c(n{}^1L_L)$ states are also discussed. Content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 licence. Any further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the title of the work, journal citation and DOI. Article funded by SCOAP3 and published under licence by Chinese Physical Society and the Institute of High Energy Physics of the Chinese Academy of Science and the Institute of Modern Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and IOP Publishing Ltd.