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Placing Art in Your Home
by Daniel Grant
Hanging Art Too High
The problem with the way paintings are hung in many homes is "obvious to wives
and almost never to husbands," said Annick Porter, an interior designer in Amherst,
Massachusetts. "He is six-foot-two and hangs everything at his eye level, which makes his five-foot-two wife always have to look up and get a crick in the neck."
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Hanging It Just Right
Compromise is needed. Porter's approach is "hang art so that the middle of the
picture is between 54 and 60 inches from the floor, which is eye-level for most people."
The eye-level art problem is just one of many faced by people who want to buy
attractive objects for their homes, but are uncertain how to make both the art and their homes look good.
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Buying Art That's Just Right
Buying art for one's home means having something one can live with. Objects
that look dynamic in a museum may prove unsuitable in a living room, such as
a John Chamberlain crushed car fender.
In general, few people wish to be challenged every time they walk into the den, although one seeks this in the art in museums and art galleries. There is a double standard at play as the more comfortable one feels with a work of art, the less one will truly look at it as time goes on.
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Art That's the Right Size
Few things look worse than enormous paintings in small rooms, leaving the room
looking dwarfed, as though the owner was too cheap to buy a big enough house. A
space of at least a couple of feet all around a large work on a wall is recommended.
Rooms with a lot of dark wood often require pictures that are light and cheery, in order to break the heavy mood; rooms with large white walls might have several pictures grouped together in order to break the monotony.
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Art with Context
A grouping of black-and-white works, such as prints and drawings, also gives these pictures a context and keeps them from appearing to dissolve into a large white wall where, from a distance, a lone image may seem like a series of fingerprints. Some consultants also suggest hanging fewer works because, as one interior designer stated, "people need some relief. You don't need a picture on every wall as some people seem to believe."
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