The artwork in your home is one of the distinguishing aspects of your design style, and you want it to be noticeable against your walls. Properly arranged groupings of artwork have an appealing collage effect; wrongly hung sets, on the other hand, are wall clutters. Determine if you need to rearrange the painting, change the spacing, or leave it to appreciate each piece and how the grouping reads as a whole.
- Art Elbow Room
If your artwork grouping reminds you of a busy subway or dance floor, or spilled pencils, the pieces are too close together. Only try taking the smallest pieces of art. If the set is now scarce, take any item down. Please rearrange the grouping on the floor. Fit each piece like a jigsaw puzzle, spaced 1 1/2 to 2 inches apart, preferably. Re-create the wall pattern using painter’s tape outlines or paper squares. Inspect the mock grouping from several focal points, such as the room entry and seating area, and rework the low-adhesive tape or paper until it is physically relaxed.
- Too-Wide-Open Spaces
The pieces of art that rest so far away appear detached. If any piece of work in your party appears to drift aimlessly on its own, you do not have enough art on the wall. Bring the pieces closer together or hang some more painting to occupy “dead” gaps. Again a collage of prints, images or drawings spaced 2 or so inches apart looks attractively bundled, not bundled or crowded; the smaller the art, the closer it is to hang together and vice versa.
- Over-the-Top Art
Hanging pieces of artwork over a bed, table, fireplace, armchair or sofa will complement and complete the furniture as long as the grouping does not overwhelm the item below. Leave about 6 inches between art and furniture or decorations, ideally. Whether the art creeps past the sides of the bed or the arms of the bench, it’s gone too far.
- Too Much Diversity
If the artwork looks messy, it may not be because you have so many pieces on the wall, but that the painting is so original. Community pieces of some kind of similarity—a color or age connection, or like subjects like aquarelle flowers or oil-painted ocean scenes, for example. Focus your art at eye level and work out as far as you dare to get a gallery impact. At the end of the day, art for walls is personal, and how you hang it needs little specific guidelines. As long as you keep color or theme and room in mind—at least vaguely—and enjoy the result, nothing else matters.
- Create a visual balance
The trick is when you hang several pieces in a group visual harmony. In a group arrangement, hold heavy parts to the bottom and left as it balances the weight of the objects because the eyes start to the left. If you’ve got an equal set up, put the heaviest piece in the center.