Picture-hanging pro explains how to hang art on your walls
Raise your hand if you and your partner have ever argued over how high to hang a picture. Raise your other hand if you have ever lazily hung a picture on a nail left by the last resident. OK, now that we’ve created a nationwide wave, put your arms down. My friends, this is no way to go through life.
Although humans have been hanging art on walls since a caveman asked a cavewoman to please display, in a nice shadow box, the tooth of a woolly mammoth, we still often do this wrong, says Shaun O’dwyer, who’s been hanging pictures professionally for 20 years.
I invited O’dwyer, of Winter Park, Florida, to my house.
We start in the entryway, where a large oil painting is hanging — I just notice — crooked. I rush to straighten it, but he gets there first and peeks behind the painting. “Uh-huh,” he says, with one cheek pressed to the wall, “just what I thought.
“One nail,” he diagnoses. “Most paintings need two.”
This is bad news. Hanging two nails exactly even, so artwork hangs level, requires the math skills of Pythagoras.
“I’ll teach you,” he says.
“A home doesn’t become a home until the art goes up,” he says, “but people freeze. I’ve been in homes where the owners are afraid to hang anything, so they live inside blank walls.”
We shake our heads gravely, as if discussing North Korea. Then O’dwyer shares his picture-hanging advice:
• Get equipped. You’ll need a hammer, measuring tape, pencil, level, assorted picture hooks, eyehooks, picture wire and a drill, he said.
• Get the height right. Pictures hung too high is the most common problem O’dwyer sees. Because eye level is relative, he uses an average unisex height of around 5 feet 6 inches. You want the middle of the art to hit that person at the bridge of his or her nose.
• Factor in furniture. Break the eye-level rule to allow for furniture clearances. For instance, the bottom edge should fall 10 to 12 inches above a sofa back to allow for head room.
• Keep sets close. When hanging a pair of pictures or a group, 2-inch margins between all frames are ideal. As art gets larger, say over 24 inches, add an inch.
• Eliminate slips. Rubber-adhesive bumpers or sticky dots placed on lower back corners help keep art from sliding.
• Use two hooks. Hanging a picture with two hooks distributes the weight and helps pictures stay straight and secure. “I can’t tell you how many homes I’ve seen where a 75-pound mirror dangles from a single nail just one door slam away from catastrophe,” he says. Use two hooks and check packaging for how much
weight the hook system is designed to hold.
• First, you need eyehooks on either side of the wood frame an equal distance from the top edge. Stretch picture wire between the hooks and secure well. (On acrylic frames, or small light canvases, you could just have a zipperlike hook across the top, which is designed to hang on one nail.)
• Hold your art where you want it and put a pencil mark on the wall at the top center of the frame edge. This is your top mark.
• Flip art over; pull the wire up in two places with your fingers, say 12 or 24 inches apart, depending on the width of the artwork; measure the distance from the lifted wire to the top of the painting. For this example, let’s say that measures 6 inches.
• Back at the wall, measure 6 inches down from the top mark and mark the spot. This is your wire mark.
• Measure the distance from the wire mark to the floor. Let’s say it’s 60 inches. If you want your hangers 12 inches apart, measure 6 inches to the right and left of the wire mark (a level may come in handy) and rough in your side marks.
• Measure from the floor up straight 60 inches to each side mark and pinpoint them.
• Hammer in two hangers so the bottom of each hook hits the side marks.
Say a little prayer, and hang your art.
Syndicated columnist Marni Jameson’s At Home column is published here weekly. Contact her at marnijameson.com. To see all of her columns, go to mercurynews.com/author/ marni-jameson/. Jameson is the author of four home and lifestyle books, including “Downsizing the Family Home — What to Save, What to Let Go.”