Are you hanging your art too high?
Art height is one of those details that's easy to leave to chance and just as easy to get right on purpose. Hung a little high, a piece drifts away from the furniture and loses its connection to the room it was meant to pull together. Hung at eye level, it settles in, and everything around it starts to look more deliberate.
Two habits tend to send art upwards. The first is the hook that's already in the wall — a tempting shortcut, but only a useful one if the previous piece was the same size. The second is the arm test: someone holds the artwork up, everyone tilts their head, and it lands wherever their shoulders got tired.
Art is made to be looked at, so it should meet you somewhere near eye level. Below is how high to hang art in practice: the number to work to, the maths that puts the hook in exactly the right place, and the handful of rooms where the rule is worth bending.
Start with the centre at 145cm
Galleries hang to a centre line, and it's the easiest habit to borrow. The centre of the artwork — not the top edge, not the hook — sits 145cm off the finished floor, or 150cm at the very most. That's average standing eye level, it's the number galleries and our design team work to, and because it's a fixed number it keeps every piece in the house consistent no matter who's holding the hammer.
The one thing to watch: the hook doesn't go at 145cm — the middle of the picture does. Four lines of very easy maths below, one pencil mark, and you're done.
The only maths involved
Over furniture, hang to the sofa or console — not the cornice
The moment there's furniture underneath, the furniture becomes the anchor and the 145 rule politely steps aside. Art above a sofa, bed, console or bedhead wants to sit 10–20cm above the top of that piece. Much higher and the two stop speaking — a lonely picture, a lonely couch, and a strange gap where the conversation should be.
Scale matters just as much. Your artwork (or your grouping, measured as one block) wants to fill at least half, and ideally two thirds, of the width of the furniture below it. A single A2 print above a three-seater — or adrift in the middle of a two-metre console — reads as an afterthought rather than the feature it could be. When you're caught between two sizes, go up: it's rare to stand back and wish the art were smaller.
