In his famous poem on the subject, Robert Frost concluded that there is something that doesn’t love a wall. That something is NOT art. Art loves walls. And most people are very happy to accommodate art—paintings, posters, prints, photographs, tapestries, antique hubcaps, whatever—by arranging aesthetic artifacts all over the place. The problem is that the process of hanging art makes people quiver in their boots. But that is only because they think there is a “right” way to hang art and that they might fail to do it correctly. In fact, it’s not that hard.

The primary principle behind hanging art is: It’s your art and your wall, so hang whatever you want where you like it. That said, however, there are a few tips.

1. The easiest wall-to-art scenario involves ONE piece of art and ONE wall. If you are lucky, the art will cover the entire wall so you won’t have to decide where on the wall to hang it. An example of this is this Seattle home (above) where a phenomenal Roberto Dutesco photograph of horses hangs. This will also put you right at trend central: Big art is in.

2. Smaller art looks better in pairs and in groups. In this San Francisco living room, two of a set of 10 lithographs by Antoni Tàpies hang over an antique table. Two more hang over the piano; six (in two rows of three) are mounted over the sofa. Yes, the designer could have hung one litho here, but by hanging two he quietly increases the visual dynamic and increases the importance of all the pieces.

3. The art “grid” is a favorite way to hang art, as in this bedroom, in which six images of Turkish sultans fill a wall above the headboard. The grid has the advantage of being almost architectural, giving a room a look of sophistication and resolution. A grid looks good all by itself, completely separate from what is actually inside the frames, which could be anything from Picasso drawings to antique botanicals to pages of children's books or old catalogs of anything at all.

4. Happily for those of us who find that excess is next to godliness, there’s no limit to how many frames you can hang in a grid or how much wall you can cover, as Todd Oldham shows in the living room of his Pennsylvania country house.

5. Once you get the hang of hanging art one piece at a time and in controlled geometric pairs and groups, you’ll have the confidence to go freehand, as was done by this extraordinary staircase in a Chicago duplex.

Michael Lassell,
Features Director, Metropolitan Home

Credits from top, down: Interior design by Garret Cord Werner, photo by John Granen; interior design by Jiun Ho, photo by Matthew Millman; interior design by Arthur Dunnam for Jed Johnson Associates, photo by Jeff McNamara; bird art by Charley Harper, photo by Todd Oldham; photo by Nathan Kirkland