Five tips for hanging pictures (and more!) in your home
If you are one of the millions of people who have been sat at home on furlough, or working from home for the past year, you are probably a bit sick of your home interior right now!
Even if you have been on top of the extra mess, you may well feel ready for some redecorating. But with social calendars booking up fast, not everybody wants to commit to a repaint. However, you could try overhauling your picture displays instead — it’s one of the quickest ways of giving your home a fresh new look. Choosing easy hanging options will mean that the DIY side of things stays low maintenance, and you don’t need to be a design genius to do it either, just follow some simple principles and decide on the pieces you like!
1. Remember the rule of three!
This is the design principle stating that things look better in threes than in twos — from objects, to colours, or even to textures. Some people say it’s because symmetry looks boring, or too forced in a room. You can apply this really easily to the framed pieces you want to put up in your home, but with pictures you don’t have to stick too rigidly to three. With smaller images or groups of differently sized ones, you can group in five, seven or nine.
2. Express yourself
A huge reason that many people don’t have art in their homes is because they don’t know what to choose, or they worry what others will think of it. The great thing about art is that you can’t get it wrong. If you like Banksy, have it on your wall. You want to put it next to a Da Vinci print? Congratulations, you have eclectic tastes. So as long as you like it, it doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks about it.
3. Make a feature of one of your walls
There are so many ways you can transform one of your living room or bedroom walls into the central feature of the room. Lots of smaller pictures grouped tightly together can look spectacular, or three larger related pieces can have a similar impact. If you are not sure where to start, then Pinterest is exploding with interior design ideas, or even templates that you can follow if you are short of ideas.
4. Think beyond pictures
Almost anything can be mounted on a wall, not just pictures, photographs or mirrors. If you have found some beautiful textile pieces on holiday, or fallen in love with a ceramic plate at an antiques fare, it’s so much easier than you think to hang it and give some of your favourite things the chance to be admired by others.
5. Work with the space that you have
If you look up ‘feature walls’ on Google you will find thousands of pictures for inspiration. This is a big-ish project though and it might take a little while to build up all the pieces you want. Try taking a ‘tour’ of your home and listing some unusual locations where you can try hanging pieces. If you have an attic with a sloping ceiling, there is hardware out there that will keep it flat. Try swapping that clock above the door with something more intriguing — or add two more clocks set to different time zones.
Don’t be put off by the practicalities of DIY when there are plenty of easy-to-use products out there. Even if you are a few millimetres off, with these tips, everyone will be too busy admiring your good taste to notice.