Designing Your Photographic Display

By Annette Bottaro-Walklet

Last year an IPW monthly meeting featured Nils Jensen, owner of Picture This, in Boise, Idaho, who spoke on the topic of how to mat and frame images. This well-attended session gave us all kinds of help in how to prepare our images and make them shine. Now that we have them framed, how do we make our images look their best on a wall? Just as selecting a color scheme for home interior walls can overwhelm us, we often freeze with fear when it comes to deciding how to hang photographic works, or any art, whether its our own or another person’s. Should I put up one or two, what size fits best, should there be a vertical or a horizontal, should I stagger them across a wall? Help!

Here are some ideas to get you moving.

Inventory your space

First, inventory the open or available wall space. Walk into each room with a notepad and make note in each room of:

• v Height and width of available space
• v Orientation – is it vertical or horizontal (or even diagonal, such as a wall along a staircase)
• v What kind of mood do you want to create in the room? Relaxed? Invigorated?
• v What is the design style of the space? Contemporary? Traditional?
• v Where will viewers tend to be situated relative to the available wall space?
• v Are there places in the room where it would be appropriate to lean a photograph instead of hang it on a wall?
• v How bright is the room?
• v Where does the light come from? Which direction and what is the quality of light?
• v Is the room naturally bright or do you need to augment the lighting?
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Inventory your images

Next, inventory all of the framed images you would like to immediately display. Just because you have framed images doesn’t mean you have to hang all of them. Keep in mind that you can change images out periodically, such as seasonally, just like a gallery would to keep your displays fresh and share a larger collection of images. On your notepad, jot down:

v General dimension of the framed image

v Whether the framing is vertical or horizontal

v Whether the image is black & white or color

v The mat color (Note: if you are trying to replicate a gallery setting, consider only using white mats for your work).

Guidelines

With the above inventorying done, consider these guidelines:

            Tiny pictures tend to get lost on a large wall, especially when displayed too far apart.

            If you don’t have any large pictures to display, consider grouping your small pictures in clusters. In this illustration, a couple grouping options are shown.
      Very small images hung in a staggered diagonal across a wall, especially far apart, is an unfortunately common approach to displaying art. A staggered diagonal layout works well enough on a wall along-side a staircase if done carefully but can be ineffective in other settings.

Larger pictures tend to look better in larger spaces and vice versa. A collection of small, framed images in a really small room can look great and make the room seem bigger. Occasionally, though, when decorating small spaces, a large picture can work as an effective focal point.

Consider creating a grid of pictures.

Group a dozen images together on one large wall, some vertical, some horizontal, of different sizes, stacked about 3” apart forming a dense grid. This unifies the works. Be deliberate about the grouping, to create some sense of order.

            Aim to make the grouping look intentionally laid-out rather than completely random. The grouping should please you and need not at all be as tidy as the ‘After’ example above.

It is helpful that there be some kind of unifying theme to images displayed in a grid. For instance, a dozen clustered pictures depicting old barns, all taken with the same focal length, will not be as interesting as a grouping containing only a couple photos of barns from a distance, along with a few close-ups of rustic details, and a couple portraits of a favorite person in front of one of the barns. Having cohesion is important, but the unifier can be subtle. Whether it's color family, era or subject matter, make sure they seem like they belong together.

The images in the grid should not include any one piece that is ‘louder’ than the others. A strong, powerful, or colorful image can and should stand alone on its own. Strong works of art need space to breathe. You may be tempted to cluster your ‘Wow!’ images together for maximum impact, but a grid made up of many powerful, loud images will simply overwhelm the viewer.

Arrange the artwork on the floor first. It allows you to move pictures around without marking up the wall. It also helps determine spacing. You can take this one step further and first lay down a piece of Kraft or butcher paper, then lay down the images and move them around as desired. When the preferred arrangement is decided on, use a pencil to draw around the outer edge of each frame and then label each drawing so that you have a map of the preferred layout. Do only one grid per room. Any more than that will make the room seem too busy.

Individual Images

If you have plenty of space or do not want to use a large grid approach, the underlying concepts still apply. Make sure your layout includes some element of frame alignment.

                  Alignment of edges is a helpful way to bring a sense of balance and cleanness to your display.

            Groups made up of odd numbers of images, rather than even numbers, tend to feel less static.

            If you have an unusually large print to display, any prints displayed near it should be reasonably large as well. In this illustration the tiny prints are overwhelmed by the big center print.

Relate the dimensions of a picture to the dimensions of the wall. For example, vertical, portrait style pictures work well on narrow sections of wall and panoramic images look amazing on thin horizontal areas.

Hang landscapes and still lifes at eye level. Exceptions to the rule would include areas where the eye level changes. In the kitchen or dining room, for example, eye level would be measured from a seated position. Portraits can be hung a little higher than eye level.

Consider where the viewer will be relative to the image. If the viewer will have walk-up access to an image, you may want to select a particularly sharp image with a lot of design detail that a viewer would enjoy studying close up. Images that will only be viewable from a distance can be of images of a more graphic type that can be appreciated and have impact even when the viewer is well across the room.

Think about the relation between your pictures and the objects in the room. If you are hanging something over a chair or sofa when decorating living rooms, for instance, it doesn't look great on the whole to choose a picture that is larger than the object beneath it. The most balanced appearance comes when an image is about 2/3 the length of the furniture.

When multiple prints are hung in a given room, try to ensure that they use the same mat color, because too many mat colors will create visual confusion. This is one reason galleries prefer white mats.

Of course in addition to physical layout considerations, there are many practical considerations very important to keep in mind as you select locations for your pictures, including proximity to sunlight, lighting itself, protection from temperature swings, etc., perhaps to be covered in upcoming editions of this newsletter.