Top 3 Questions About Hanging Art - Hang Art Like a Pro
Young artists in gallery hanging together painting on walls

Top 3 Questions About Hanging Art

Tips for Hanging Art Like a Pro

Young artists in gallery hanging together painting on walls

I can’t tell you how many homes I go into that have NO art hung on the walls.

I’m always amazed at how afraid people are to hang things on the wall.

You CAN do it!

It’s just a nail hole. It can be fixed, easily, if need be.

You NEED things hanging on your walls!

It makes it your home!

One of the most popular questions I get is about hanging artwork.

How high do I hang artwork?

How much space should I leave between pictures?

How far above the furniture should I hang art?

So, how high should you hang your artwork?

Art should be hung at eye level with the center of the art at about 55 – 60” above the floor.

If you’re hanging 2 pieces of art together treat them as one piece. The center point to hang will be the center of the space between the 2 pieces.

Which leads to…

How much space should I leave between pictures?

Generally speaking you should leave 2 – 3” between artwork. Unless your artwork is really oversized and then you’ll want 6 – 8” between them.

If you’re doing a collage of smaller artwork you could go smaller with 1 – 2” between them. If it’sacollage, group it using the correct space between and then find the center of the group and hang it with that center 55 – 60” above the floor. Another tip for hanging a collage is to lay it all out on the floor to see how it looks then transfer one piece at a time to the wall. That way you’ll have a plan to work from. I’ve even seen people make paper templates of the art and hang those on the wall to see how it looks first. If you’re using ready made frames you can use the paper inside the frame as a rough guide, as long as you account for the size of the frame in your plan.

A few tricks for hanging wall collages –

You pick a larger picture, center it, and work off of it with the other pictures, leaving the same amount of space between every picture.

You can also draw an imaginary rectangle on the wall and line up the outside of all art with that square, thus ending up with a perfect square collage.

Or, you can draw an imaginary center line on the wall and line up the top and bottom of the art with the line, thus ending up with a vertically centered linear collage.

How high should the artwork be above a sofa, or a bed, or a dresser?

When hanging artwork over a sofa or bed, generally you want about 6 – 8” between the top of the furniture and the bottom of the frame.  You want the art to be in relation to the furniture, not centered on the wall space.

If you’ve been reading my blog for a while you’ll know that I’m not much for rules, sometimes you just have to eyeball it and go with your gut. BUT, having the rules to fall back on when it just doesn’t look right is the EASY way to go about it.

#decoratewithwhatmakesyouhappy

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2 Comments

  1. I liked how you explained that the paper inside the frame can be a rough guide for your plan. My wife and I just got a lot of photos taken. We’ll have to look into customized photo frames so that we can get all of our pictures up on the wall.

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