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How to hang a gallery wall

Everyone starts backwards. Don't choose art: decide first what rectangle of wall you're going to occupy. Then respect a single number — the spacing — because that's what turns separate pieces into a set.

The rectangle first, the pieces second

Almost everyone starts by choosing art. That's backwards: decide first what rectangle of wall you're going to occupy, and only then look for pieces to fill it.

That rectangle has a correct size, and it depends on what's underneath:

• Over a sofa or a bed: two thirds of the furniture's width. A 220 cm sofa wants about 145 cm of set.
• Over a sideboard or console: 60 to 75 % of the furniture's width, bottom edge 20-25 cm above the surface.
• On an empty wall: put the centre at 145-150 cm off the floor — eye level.
• Up a staircase: the set follows the diagonal of the handrail, not the horizontal. Each piece at the same height above its own step.

Spacing: 5 to 8 centimetres

This is the number that turns separate pieces into a set. Five centimetres for small work, eight for large, and the same gap throughout.

Below four, the frames visually touch and it looks like a hanging error. Above ten, each piece lives on its own and the unity is gone. The practical rule: the gap should be smaller than the short side of the smallest piece.

The four layouts that work

Grid

Same size, same frame, in rows and columns. The easiest to get right and the hardest to ruin: matching frames and constant spacing and it works. Two by two, three by two, three by three. This is the layout for not thinking.

Centre line

Different sizes aligned on an imaginary horizontal running through the centre of every piece. Gives movement without disorder. Works especially well over long furniture.

Salon

The museum one: many pieces of different sizes filling a rectangle, with constant spacing as the only order. It has the most personality and it's the one that goes wrong most. Survival rule: place the largest piece first, slightly off centre, and build around it.

Pair or trio

Two or three pieces in a line. It's what you hang when there's no room for more, and there's no trick beyond the spacing. With three of different sizes, the big one goes in the middle.

Frames: matching, or deliberately not

There are two roads and no workable middle.

All matching is the safe one: same material, same width, same colour. The art supplies the variety. It's what makes a wall of twelve different prints look like a collection rather than a jumble.

Deliberately mixed needs a common thread: the mat colour, the moulding width, or the material family — all woods, all metals. Without that thread it isn't eclectic, it's messy.

What never works is three black frames and one oak because the shop ran out.

Hanging it, step by step

1. Cut each piece out of brown paper, at its final framed size. Write on each cut-out which piece it is.
2. Lay it all on the floor in front of the wall and move things until you're happy. Far faster than doing it on the wall.
3. Move the cut-outs onto the wall with painter's tape, keeping the spacing. Live with it for a full day.
4. Mark the nail point on the paper, not the wall: measure from the top edge of the frame down to the hanger and transfer that distance onto the cut-out.
5. Drill through the paper and tear it off afterwards. The holes land exactly.

Step 4 is the one everybody skips and the one that produces the extra holes. A frame's hanger is never at the top edge: it sits two to five centimetres below it, and that distance has to come off.

The short way: see it before you drill

All of the above exists because an arrangement is hard to picture. If the store you're buying from has augmented reality, the work shrinks to pointing your phone: you see the whole set hanging on your wall, at real size and in its frames, and you move the pieces before buying anything.

That's what the app we build does. And for a store it changes something more important than convenience: when the customer builds the whole wall, they don't buy one print, they buy seven.

Keep reading: what size art goes above a sofa, or standard frame and print sizes.