Displaying Your Art - After You Paint (21 of 27)

When hanging a piece of art, how high do you think you should hang it? The standard is to situate the midpoint of a painting at about eye level for the average adult when standing. This places it at approximately 57 to 60 inches from the floor. Now it's said that you should gear it towards 57 if the room has a low ceiling and towards 60 if it's high. Ultimately, of course, it's a matter of preference. The difference really isn't that great. I personally usually opt for 60 inches. Now there is a formula for figuring this out. Let me walk you through how I hang paintings centered at 60 inches. First, measure the height of your framed painting. For example, 24 inches. Divide that number by 2, so a 24 inch high frame would be 12. This gives you your midpoint. Third, determine where the wire sits when it's taut. For example, 2 inches from the top. Subtract the wire measurement from the midpoint measurement. In my case, 12 inches minus 2 equals 10. Now when I add 10 inches to the midpoint of 60 inches, I get 70 inches. And so I'm going to measure from the floor to 70 inches and mark the spot with a pencil. That is where you should hang your hook. Now not your nail, that should be where your hook is. And then once it's in place, you can hang your painting. If you're hanging a painting over a piece of furniture, experts recommend allowing 4 to 6 inches between the top of the furniture and the base of the artwork. I've included a handout with some more specific recommendations in that regard. It gets a little more complicated when creating a wall of art. You can hang paintings single stacked all along the wall. You can hang them double stacked along the wall. You can use one piece as an anchor. It's suggested to hang the center painting on center, meaning 60 inches or whatever you choose, and then arrange all the other work around it. Or you can simply create a creative grouping. Adhering to these rules will give you a sense of continuity in your display. With my hanging system, as I mentioned, I can hang single or I can double stack the paintings. And I can hang a whole wall like this. I could, if I painted small, even hang three pieces on one wire if I wanted to. It's a little trickier to create a salon style appearance with this kind of system, but you can do it with freestanding plated nail and hook sets. One trick if you're going to go that route that helps when you're designing the layout is to use craft paper sized to each piece and then taped to the wall where you can work out the arrangement before hammering any nails. In this way, you can easily move items around just by kind of resticking them in different places until you perfect the design. Also, if you mark on each paper where the hook should be placed, then after you have all the papers in the right place, you can hammer the nail and hook into each one, take the paper down, and simply hang the paintings. The hooks will remain ready for the art. Now extra large or large paintings will likely need two separate hanging supports. You will want to look for a heavy duty version with a high weight capability. Some people or establishments hang paintings directly from the D-rings for extra strength and specifically for larger pieces. Extra large work should be centered at 48 to 55 inches rather than the 57 to 60 inches for the standard painting. Certain pieces may need to be hung even lower. Extra large pieces should also sit about 6 to 12 inches over a piece of furniture. Once you have your preferred hanging system established and you have work on the wall for display, the next thing to concern yourself with is the lighting. That's the topic of our next lecture.