Lessons Learned: Hanging Framed Photos

As much as I love posting my photos here on my blog and on Flickr, I find that I get a lot more out of them when I have them properly printed, framed and hung in my house. I moved into my current apartment in July but I'm just now getting around to hanging a whole new set of photos on the wall. Part of the fun is changing out most if not all of the images when I move to a new place.

You'd think it would be a trivial project to hang a couple of photos on the wall. But I learned this morning that things can get a little more complicated when you're trying to hang a group in an orderly fashion.

Here's what I found out the hard way, maybe it will help you avoid my mistakes:

• Hang the middle photo first, then place the other photos by seeing how they look with that center photo placed.
• If you're marking the horizontal location for that center photo with tape, make sure your dog doesn't eat the tape while you're facing away.
• If you're hanging for people who will view the photos standing, hang with the center 60 inches off the ground. Especially pay attention to this rule if you're taller than normal -- if you try to eyeball it, you're going to be too high. Mine are at 62 inches and I still think they're probably a little too high.
• If you have vertical and horizontal photos, put the hook for the vertical photos higher by exactly half the amount the longer dimension extends past the shorter (i.e., for 11x14 frames, 3/2 inches). Sounds obvious, but it will save you time versus eyeballing it.
• Use picture wires behind the frames rather than the built-in hanging holes. But don't put much slack in the wires... if they get enough upwards angle, they may start dragging the frame clips up the inside of the frame.
• Measure twice... then measure again. Once you've marked the location of the outside pictures, re-measure their distance to the nail or hook for the middle frame, or measure across both and see if the middle matches up with that nail. I found an error of about 1/2 inch when I did this.

(And for the record, the leftmost photo in this image is definitely not one of mine. It's a famous photographer - points for anyone who knows who it is.)