Tips for Hanging Wall Art

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You know my love for wall art. I’ve been sharing ideas for decorating walls on this blog as long as it’s been in existence. I feel really strongly that hanging things on your walls makes a difference in how you feel about your home. Recently, I got a really great question about knowing where on the wall to hang artwork. Why not do a Decorating 101 on Hanging Wall Art.

A general rule for hanging wall art is that it should be at eye-level. Of course, this gets tricky when you have multiple pieces (like a gallery wall), have a huge wall you are trying to fill, etc.

Single Piece of Art
If you are hanging a single piece or art on the wall, in general the piece should be at eye-level. They say that the midpoint for the artwork should be 60 inches off the ground. That’s eye-level for most of us. For this, I just walk up to the wall, place my arms out and hammer in a nail. Since I’m a bit shorter, I might hanging it a couple of inches higher than my eye-level.

If you’re hanging a piece of art above a sofa, table, or headboard, the bottom of the frame should be about 8-10 inches above the piece of furniture.

Here’s an example of a piece that’s hung too low. This mirror is just an inch or so off the top of the table. I was working with an existing nail, I had something smaller here previously. The top of the mirror is at eye-level and it’s simply too low – it doesn’t work.

See how much better this works for this space? It’s hung a little higher, about at eye-level. There’s about 10 inches between the bottom of the frame at the top of the table.

Gallery Wall
The general eye-level rule still applies to gallery walls. The midpoint of the gallery wall should be at eye-level. When hanging a grid style gallery wall, you can draw a line at eye-level and then build out from there.

I did stray slightly away from this rule when installing my grid gallery wall because I was installing next to a hallway opening. This works because the top of the gallery wall is even with the opening of the hallway for a nice clean line. In the image above, eye-level is about at the bottom of the frames in the top row.

Bucking The Rule
Sometimes the eye-level rule just cannot apply. This was the case for my TV gallery wall. My TV here is at eye-level, perhaps a bit higher because our sideboard is on the taller side. So the bottom of the gallery wall (the TV) is at eye-level, not the middle.

That works because the wall is larger and the gallery wall is tight, the frames are close together and close to the TV. If you are placing around around something existing, like this, then you may have to buck the eye-level rule a little bit and that’s okay.

Another place you might buck the rule is about a nightstand on either side of a bed. Having art 8 to 10 inches above the nightstand may look odd. I tend to have the midpoint of the art be about 8-10 inches above the top of the nightstand if possible. In this instance, you’ll see the frame on the right is just about an inch or two above the top of the table. You don’t want it hanging much higher than that because then the whole grouping of photos would look like they are floating above the nightstand, they would look separated from the design not incorporated into the design.

I would love to hear if you have rule of thumb you follow when hanging wall art. It can be tricky but the biggest tip I have to share when it comes to hanging pictures is to keep it eye-level!