Picture Perfect

Seven tips for decorating your home with pictures

Nothing makes a home personal and pleasing like some good artwork or photos on the walls. It can complement your furniture, tell a story about you, bring some colour to the room or just cosy it up. So here are our top tips for putting pictures on your walls.

1. If you rent or don’t want to commit to a nail hole, look into the self-adhesive options, which can be very good, especially for canvases that don’t weigh too much. I have to admit I haven’t had success with anything other than the Command brand, but there might be some others out there.

2. If you have something really heavy, you will have to hammer in a nail in order to safely hang your picture. And you’ll want to make sure you hang it in a secure place. A stud wall is a timber frame behind your wall, holding it up, and it’s the most secure place to hang a picture from. You can find it by knocking on the wall or by using a stud-finder. You can get everything you need at your local hardware store, usually in a kit form. There are lots of how-tos on the web, e.g. here and here and here.

3. Apparently, most of us hang our pictures too high. Experts recommend hanging so that the middle of the picture is at eye level, and some give around 145cm as the magic number.

4. Another tip is not to hang your picture in direct line with any doorframes or furniture, which can look awkward.

5. If you’re going to hang pictures in a group, or a “gallery”, remember that the magical number of 145 cm (from the floor) for the centre of the group. Keep the space between all the pictures equal.

6. To keep your picture straight once it is on the wall, get some peel-and-stick rubber dots and put them on the four corners, at the back, of your picture. They will give your art some stability.

7. Similarly, felt dots at the corners on the back of your picture will protect your walls from scrapes.