We’re moving into a new house soon, so to make things go faster on moving day, we set aside a day last weekend and headed over to the new place with all our artwork for a marathon day of picture hanging.
When you’re just hanging one or two pieces, it’s fun to play around with different heights, but when you’re doing an entire house all at once, you need to have a system so you don’t spend all day doing math.
Luckily, there’s an easy way to get this right: The Rule of 58. Simply put, if you make sure that the center of each piece is 58 inches from the floor, your entire space will look cohesive and be hung at eye level: the perfect height that most museums and art galleries use in their displays.
Here is how it’s done:
1) Measure the height of your artwork and divide that by two. On our 30-inch tall piece, this number was 15 inches.
2) Measure the distance between the top of the stretched wire on the back of your piece and the top of your picture frame. In our case, this was 4 inches.
3) Subtract the second number from the first number. Using our numbers above, 15 minus 4 got us 11 inches.
4) Add this number to 58. Install your picture hanger on that mark (58 + 11 = 69), and you’re done!
Try it. You’ll see it’s a breeze …
… and before you know it, you’ll be hanging entire collections like a pro!
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