Hang the artwork so its centre sits 145 cm above the floor. That is standard gallery hanging height and roughly average standing eye level. Above a sofa or a sideboard, leave 20–25 cm between the top of the furniture and the bottom of the frame. Everything else — hook heights, groups, staircases — follows from those two numbers.
Why 145 cm and not higher?
Because 145 cm is where most people's eyes already are. It is the height galleries and museums hang to, and it is the reason a well-hung room feels settled rather than tense.
The number applies to the centre of the piece, not its top edge and not its bottom edge. A small print and a large one hung correctly share a centre line at 145 cm, which is what makes a wall of mixed sizes look deliberate instead of scattered.
Almost every hanging mistake is the same mistake in a different room: too high. People hold the frame up, someone stands back and says "a bit higher", and it ends up at 160 or 170 cm — floating, disconnected from the furniture below it. The correction, when it comes, is always downward.
Where exactly does the hook go?
This is the part that goes wrong at the wall, with a pencil in your teeth. The hook does not go at 145 cm — the centre of the artwork does. The hook goes higher, by half the frame's height, minus the slack in its hanging wire.
The formula:
Hook height = 145 + (frame height ÷ 2) − D
D is the drop: the distance from the top of the frame down to the taut hanging wire or hook slot. Measure it before you measure anything else. Pull the wire tight, as it will be once the frame's weight is on it, and measure from the top edge of the frame straight down to the highest point of the wire. On a frame with a fixed slot or bracket rather than a wire, measure to the slot.
D is typically around 8 cm, and that is what the table below assumes. But it varies with how the wire was strung, so measure yours rather than trusting ours. An 8 cm error puts the whole piece 8 cm off, which is precisely the amount that looks wrong without being obviously wrong.
| Size (cm) | Frame height ÷ 2 | Hook height (D = 8 cm) | Bottom of frame above floor |
|---|---|---|---|
| A4 (21 × 30) | 15 cm | 145 + 15 − 8 = 152 cm | 130 cm |
| A3 (30 × 42) | 21 cm | 145 + 21 − 8 = 158 cm | 124 cm |
| 50 × 70 | 35 cm | 145 + 35 − 8 = 172 cm | 110 cm |
| 70 × 100 | 50 cm | 145 + 50 − 8 = 187 cm | 95 cm |
| 100 × 140 | 70 cm | 145 + 70 − 8 = 207 cm | 75 cm |
The last column is a sanity check. If the bottom edge lands below the top of the furniture underneath, you have the wrong size for the wall rather than the wrong height, and the poster size guide is the faster fix.
Two notes on the table. It assumes the frame's outer height matches the print size, which is how our five sizes are built; if you are hanging something with a wide surround, measure the frame itself and halve that. And in a portrait-format piece the height is the larger number — hang a 50×70 landscape and the 35 becomes 25, so the hook drops to 162 cm.
Best sellers, shown at 50×70 — hook height 172 cm
Green HilmaTara Green
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Bauhaus Woman 03David Wolf
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Hilma No 02Tara Green
Bauhaus Woman 02David Wolf
Print, frame and hook in one order? Buy them together and the only thing left to measure is D. Shop all best sellers →
How high above a sofa or a sideboard?
The clearance you are aiming for is a strip of bare wall 20–25 cm deep, measured from whatever stands below — sofa back, sideboard top, console top — up to the frame's lower edge. Tighter than that and the picture looks propped on the furniture rather than hung above it; looser and the two stop reading as one group.
Where the seat back is low, that clearance drops the centre right around 145 cm without any further arithmetic, which is the point: both rules were worked out in the same kind of room. Where the back is tall, clearance takes priority and the piece ends up above 145 cm. That is correct. Let it.
Check it against the last column of the table. A 50×70 has its bottom edge at 110 cm when centred at 145, so it needs furniture no taller than about 85–90 cm behind it. A 70×100 sits at 95 cm, which is tight above a tall sideboard and comfortable above a sofa.
Does a high ceiling mean hanging higher?
No. Ceiling height does not change eye level. A 3.5 m ceiling is still occupied by people about 1.7 m tall, and their eyes are still at 145 cm.
Hanging to the ceiling instead of to the people is the single most common mistake we hear about, and it always goes the same direction — too high, never too low. The instinct is to centre the artwork in the empty wall, which puts it well above head height and leaves a dead band of skirting-level wall underneath.
If a tall wall feels bare below the art, the answer is more art or a larger piece, not a higher one. That is what the 100×140 exists for.
How high do you hang a gallery wall?
Same number, different object. For a group, 145 cm is the centre of the whole arrangement — treat the entire block of frames as one rectangle, find its centre, and put that at 145 cm. Individual frames within the group land wherever the layout puts them.
Leave 4 cm between frames. It is close enough that the group reads as a single piece rather than several pictures that happen to share a wall, and it is the spacing we use in our own layouts.
Lay it out on the floor first, measure the block's overall height, halve it, and work each hook from there with the same formula.
How do you hang art up a staircase?
Follow the stair line. Do not try to keep a single height along a rising wall — the pieces should climb at the same angle as the stairs, so the arrangement runs parallel to the handrail.
The rule still holds locally: centre each piece 145 cm above the tread it hangs over. Stand on that step, measure up from it, and the whole run stays at eye level for the person actually climbing the stairs.
Before you drill
Measure D on the frame, put it into the formula, mark the hook height in pencil, and level the frame with a spirit level rather than by eye against the ceiling — ceilings are less level than they look.
What you want in hand before you start: the print, the frame it was built for, and a hook rated for the weight. Oak and black cover every size we make, with the colour options stopping at 50×70, so a 70×100 or 100×140 is oak or black. If you would rather skip the assembly, our framing service sends the piece mounted, glazed and ready to hang — you still measure D, but that is all you measure.
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