Design Tip Tuesday: Hanging Artwork

This week’s Design Dilemma comes from Melissa, who has a lot of art and no idea how to hang it. Also, she and her husband can‚Äôt agree on how high to hang things. So here‚Äôs a primer for hanging your art.

Hang it at eye-level. That means that a picture, or a grouping should be hung so that the center of the piece is about 5’-6” feet high.

Take your art for a test drive. Cut it to the sizes of your art. Use painter’s tape and hang the paper on the wall. This is a great tip: run the tape along your jeans to lessen its stickiness first. Use the newspaper cutouts to make your arrangement.

Go for the grid. Think of your artwork as one piece. Divide them into two or more rows. Align the tops of the top row and the bottoms of the bottom row (and the sides as well) to set a variety of shapes within a rectangle or square.

Hanging it on the stairway. Up a staircase, pictures should be hung to duplicate the rising levels of the stairs. It looks best to keep throughout a uniform distance between the center of the edge of a step next to the wall and the center point of the picture directly above. As for how high to hang, start off with the center point of the art about 5’ from the center point of the step. With same-sized pictures keep spacing consistent. Typically, this is 2” – 3” apart. If you have varying sizes of art works, try for some balance by aligning the bottoms of some frames with the tops of others or centering some of the pictures on top of each other. This works well when round or oval frames are in the mix. Be sure to place larger pictures at the bottom to give to grouping balance.

Relate Art to Furniture. In general, when hanging art over furniture it should be no wider than the furniture because then it will look top heavy. The space between the top of a mantel and the bottom of the picture is most pleasing in a range from 3” to 7”. Over a table or sofa from 4” to 8” is a good range.

Mood is important. Pictures hung in a horizontal line tend to elongate, widen and emphasize a casual decorating scheme. Pictures hung vertically tend to give a more formal ambiance and add to the illusion of height. One large piece can be used as a focal point in a room and create lots of impact in an otherwise boring room. Likewise, lots of small art or photographs hung together can create visual interest.

Ways to create even more visual interest. Odd numbers better than even. Show only odd numbers of pictures on a wall or in a given room. This works with more than art, too. Another way to add interest is to alternate large and small pictures. Smaller pictures should be about one-half to two-thirds the size of a their larger counterpart. In other words, the surface area of two smaller pictures should equal that of one large picture. Sometimes I like to hang a larger piece over a smaller one. You’ll know by looking at it if it works.

I hope this helps! Please keep your design questions coming in. I love Design Tip Tuesdays.

Do you have a favorite way of hanging your artwork? Why not share it with us?