Wednesday, January 28, 2009

question for designers: how do you hang artwork on blank walls?

I have been busily sketching out a few of the rooms in the Cottage of Stone. I am old school that way - no software for me, I like the organic quality of putting pencil to paper. (This from the IT expert!) It is like rolling up your sleeves and putting your fingers in the soil while gardening. Bliss!

I am working on pulling the furniture away from the walls in the living room and maintaining the conversational feel of my furniture. And it looks super great! Except for one problem... how do you hang your art work?

OK, so I get if I have a table against the wall, it is easy to put a nice vase and some candlesticks on the table, and hang the artwork over the table. Or if you sofa is pushed up against the wall, hang "sofa paintings" over it. They make it easy for us huh? They even call them "sofa paintings."

But what do you do when you don't have furniture against your walls? Just hang the artwork as you wish and hope it doesn't look like it is hanging randomly like in a gallery? You don't have furniture to anchor it down anymore... so what do you do?

Seriously designers... chime in here. How do you hang artwork on big walls without furniture to tie it in??

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hey Puck!
Just found your blog and love it! I've lived in old houses and totally know what you're going through. My husband was doing a quick fix in the kitchen of our 1880's house and found that the studs of back wall to the kitchen addition (people kept adding onto the back end of the house!)were just resting on dirt. no kind of foundation at all, just dirt! Memories... :o)
In answer to you question, I've worked in art and framing where 90% of our business was for designers. I've hung too many pictures to count and have a crazy number in my own home. Looking at everything after reading your post I noticed that all of my pictures are hung at eye level with the center of the piece. I'm 5'4" and my husband's 6'4" and it doesn't bother him. No matter how big or small, eye level (while standing) you can't go wrong. My pet peeve is hanging a picture too high. I just want to grit my teeth and reach for my hammer and hanging kit...