How To Arrange Wall Art: A Complete Guide To Art Placement

We provide illustrated suggestions for hanging wall art to brighten up your home decor. Creating a wall art is a great way to spruce up your space, display beautiful artifacts, and tie an interior design together. It allows you to evoke emotions in a room while also exhibiting your preferences and hobbies.

Arranging artworks on a white wall, on the other hand, might be challenging. This is why we created this guide. Below, we show you how to organize wall art in a variety of ways to maximize your wall space, including special tips for creating a gallery wall. With these suggestions, you can use your art to make the most impact in your area while also customizing it in the most appealing way.

Select Your Wall

First, decide where you want to hang your artworks. Should you go with a large or little wall. Significant gaps must be filled. Small pieces on a huge surface can appear lost and alone, so go big with a single large work. Another fantastic option is to create a collection of artifacts that can be displayed on a huge wall. Smaller places, like those between windows and doors, are great for displaying your more delicate items. In a cluster, these can also be used as a gallery wall.

Hanging your artwork is the only way to display it. Framed artworks and stretched canvases can be displayed on an easel, a mantelpiece, floating shelves, or on the floor against a wall. This creates a more casual appearance while also allowing you to change your layouts more easily and without causing damage to the wall.

Create a Strategy

Before you pick up a hammer or drill, consider how you want to organize your work. You can accomplish this with either digital tools or low-tech materials such as kraft paper and tape. If you’re creating a complex arrangement with varying-sized elements, you’ll want to test it out before nailing it to the wall. Arrange the works you want to display on the floor as one straightforward approach.

You can take it a step further by making templates of the parts and putting them on your wall. Trace and cut out the outlines of the works on kraft paper. Then, using painter’s tape, tape the cutouts to the wall in different groupings, taking a step back to see how each looks. When you’ve decided on an arrangement, use the cutouts to mark where each item will go on the wall. You can now confidently hammer the nails in.

Display Wall Art at Eye Level

A good rule of thumb is to hang wall art with the center at eye level for easy viewing. Eye level is about 57 to 60 inches above the ground. If the room has a low ceiling or if the residents sit a lot, you might want to hang your items lower.

 Take Into Account the Furniture

Art can be used to spruce up a sofa, console table, sideboard, or bed. So, what criteria should you consider while hanging artwork above furniture? An art arrangement should be no broader than the piece of furniture it drapes over in terms of aesthetics. It should span two-thirds of the width of the sofa and begin about 8 to 10 inches above it.

Wall Art Arrangement Suggestions

When deciding how to hang paintings on a wall, there are various factors to consider, including the surface, space, and equipment needed, to name a few. We’ve provided pointers to help you determine the best layout, achieve visual balance, choose and pair artworks, hang on various types of walls, and more.

Arrangements of Symmetrical Walls

A symmetrical wall arrangement is formal, traditional, and neat. It could be a four-to-six-piece grid or a horizontal row for an odd number of works. The spacing between the pieces should be nearly equal, and it works best if they are all the same size and have similar frames.

These arrangements are perfect for hanging over chairs or lining a hallway.

Asymmetrical Wall Configurations

Asymmetrical compositions exude a more collected and diversified vibe. They might be small art clusters or large, salon-style gallery walls. Both systems allow you to mix and match components of different sizes, styles, and orientations, as well as frames of varied types and widths.

You can also mix and match paintings, photographs, and prints with wall sculptures, baskets, dishes, mirrors, and sconces on a gallery wall. These less-structured layouts provide more freedom, but maintaining visual balance can be challenging.

Developing Visual Balance

To keep a great balance in an arrangement of artworks of varying sizes, draw an invisible line in the middle of the wall or in the area you’re covering, and make sure you don’t add too much “weight” on either side of it.

Hang the largest, most conspicuous pieces first, either in the centre or near the bottom of the arrangement, to create a focal point. Then, working your way outward, gradually add smaller bits. The layout can be expanded over time as your collection grows. Try to utilize the same color or style at least once to keep things consistent.

Selecting and Combining Art Styles for a Gallery Wall

When buying art for your home, choose works that speak to you. If you’re buying something online, read the piece description to learn about the artist and double-check the pricing and shipping information.

Make sure that the artworks you choose complement or relate to your overall theme and furniture design. Artworks can either fit the color palette of your room or serve as focal points.

Pairing art lets you to express yourself creatively. Choose items that are coherent in some way, whether it’s through color, style, or topic. Fine-art prints, for example, could be mixed with black-and-white photographs. Alternatively, you can make a statement by juxtaposing objects in different genres, such as a vibrant Pop art piece and an ancient painting.

Wall Art Spacing

It may be tough to gauge the spacing between pieces of wall art by eye, so a measurement tool will come in handy. However, how far apart should the works be placed?

Follow your instincts when it comes to the wall, however here are some spacing standards for different layouts:

• Grid layout: Leave three to four inches between frames to make the arrangement tight.

• When adopting a triptych design, provide four to six inches for breathing space.

Adding Photos to a Gallery Wall

Gallery walls aren’t just for displaying paintings and prints; they may also be used to exhibit pictures. A gallery wall can also be used to display family photos and recently purchased artwork, as well as pieces in a variety of mediums. Here are some tips to help you achieve a balanced blend. Select images with the same general color scheme as the other artworks.

Photographs in black-and-white compliment black-and-white paintings and etchings beautifully, but they can also be utilized in other color schemes. Choose a frame with a wide mat for family photos. This gives them the impression of framed artworks and helps them fit in with the gallery wall.

Suggestions for Hanging Art on Various Surfaces

The weight of the art, as well as the sort of wall it will be hung on, will dictate how it is hung. Here are some general principles to remember:

• Drywall on a stud: Run a stud finder around the area where you wish to hang your artwork and take note of the stud boundaries it discovers. Then, decide which stud is most suited for your picture hanging and hammer it into place.

• Drywall without a stud: Instead of a picture hanger, use an anchor and a screw when there are no studs in the drywall. The anchor penetrates the walls and secures your artwork.

• Concrete or brick walls: The procedure for these surfaces is a little more complicated. Use a hammer drill with a masonry bit to drill a hole in the wall large enough to receive a masonry screw, or use a wall anchor and screw for a large picture.

Now that you’ve read our advice, scroll down to see the whole visual guide to organizing wall art. Hopefully, these tips have given you more confidence in placing wall art to enrich your living environment. However, keep in mind that these are not hard and fast laws. Above all, the arrangement you design should feel organic and purposeful. Check out our vast variety of wall art on Aryan Art for additional home design inspiration.