We specialise in creating beautiful, modern art prints in our studio and we have years of experience in hanging framed art pictures in our customer’s homes, so we’ve come up with some simple tips for how to hang wall art correctly. After reading this guide you’ll never have to worry if you’re hanging wall art at the wrong height again.

Here are our top tips for hanging pictures:

The most common mistake we see is wall art hung too high or too low. We have a golden rule that it’s all about ‘eye-level’. 

Yes, we know everyone is a different height and therefore, so is eye level, but we tend to work around displaying the centre of the art print at eye level, being approximately 150cm or 60” from the floor. The centre of the picture should be eye level.

However, sometimes the ‘eye level’ rule doesn’t apply, like if you’re hanging your wall art above furniture such as a sofa, console table or a bedhead. In this case aim for the bottom of the picture frame to be approximately 20cm or 8”, and centred above the piece of furniture. 

This will make your picture a focal point above the furniture and part of the overall interior design. Art prints hung above furniture should be ideally approximately 2/3 the width of the furniture – either a single framed print or multiple prints, like a gallery wall. (see Tip #2)

When hanging two or more pieces of wall art, treat the grouping as one and follow the eye level rule for this one, combined art set. Find the centre of the cluster of pictures and place this at eye level. You'll notice art galleries and museums do this very well, by using an anchor or main piece of art to work out from.

When hanging multiple art prints, select a pattern to follow. It can be a simple grid or a more organic layout that suits your personality and home decor style. With whatever pattern you chose, try to keep consistent spacing between the frames of varying sizes.

The ideal spacing between the art prints depends on the size of each picture frames. If they’re small to medium-sized, we tend to use a gap of around 5cm or 2” between frames. If larger, we would go for 10cm or 4”. 

Place the art prints next to each other flat on a table or the floor first, before you start knocking holes in your wall, to work out what size spacing works best. By doing so, you can play around with the configuration, see how they look when placed next to one another, and determine their optimal arrangement.

Every scenario is different, so at the end of the day, make sure you love the way your wall art is displayed. Trust your judgement.

As in Tip #2 treat multiple art prints or Gallery Walls / Art Walls as one when determining the overall height on the wall. Lay the art prints on the floor or a table, measuring the spacing between each picture frame. We always recommend doing this before you get the hammer and nails out. (Read the tips below if you don't want to use nails to fix your pictures to the wall)

BONUS TIP: It’s much harder to use a picture rail to hang an art wall, unless you can do it correctly and neatly, you will end up with picture wire everywhere. So it’s probably easier to fix the pictures straight on the wall, using traditional picture hooks or, if you don't want to use nails, Command Strips.

Another approach is to make a “rough draft” before hanging. Start by cutting paper into templates the size of your wall art including picture frames and tape them to the wall with masking or painter’s tape. 

This will give you a better sense of how your art will look prior to hanging your art prints, without punching a series of unneeded holes into your wall.

If your framed art print is heavy it may require two fixing methods to secure it to the wall. Here are some additional tips; if your picture frame has string, use a book or magazine (as in the image below) approximately half the width of the framed wall art to work out the fixing position, in order to get the correct measurements for your picture hook. See below.