Guide: How high should a picture hang on the wall?
The way your pictures hang on the wall significantly impacts the expression of your home. Therefore, it's a good idea to be meticulous when hanging your chosen picture and to use this guide, which provides the correct formula for how high posters should hang on the wall if they are to look their best.
The golden formula: How high should pictures hang?
Many of us estimate by eye how high a poster should hang on the wall – and we often do so while standing, holding the chosen poster up to the wall in front of us. This often results in us placing our posters far too high compared to what is actually optimal for the room's aesthetic. But what should we do instead? How do we figure out how high pictures should hang above the sofa or other furniture – or on a bare wall where the picture really needs to stand out?
The formula for perfectly hung posters
How high should posters hang? Often, we look at our hung posters from a seated position, and therefore, posters should not be placed as high on the wall as you might think. In most cases, an appropriate height for hanging posters will be with the center of the poster placed 145 cm above the floor. The correct placement can be calculated using the following formula: 145 cm + half the height of your poster minus the distance from the screw to the top of the poster. For example, if the poster is 70 cm high and the screw needs to be 3 cm down from the top, the calculation would be: 145 cm + 35 cm minus 3 cm = 177 cm. Your screw would therefore need to be screwed into the wall 177 cm above the floor.
Should the rule never be deviated from?
Of course it can! Take our formula as a guideline, and decide for yourself how high your pictures should hang. Hang all pictures at the same height, or experiment with the expression that different heights of your posters create. If you have the perfect spot in your home for a particular poster, you should naturally use it, and you can move your chosen posters around as often as you like when you want a new look. It's also ideal to create a picture wall with posters of different sizes, hung at different heights – perhaps in a specific shape or as a cluster or cloud. No matter how high your pictures hang on the wall, they help create a lot of personality in the home, where it's wonderful to step in and truly feel at home.