How to center your artwork: with the furniture or wall?
How to correctly center artwork on the wall is one of the most popular questions we get asked:
Q: I have a piece of furniture that is not located in the center of the wall. If I want to hang a piece of art above it, should the artwork be centered with the furniture or the wall?
When hanging your pictures, always hang them in relation to the furniture sitting below. With your couch off-centered on the wall, focus on hanging your painting centered above the couch to create a great focal point for your living room. As you can see, if you were to hang your piece centered with the wall, the entire furniture arrangement looks out of balance.
Hanging artwork with furniture is a good decorating guideline that works with all kinds of pieces. In the table image above you can see how hanging the artwork so it is centered over the table creates balance and harmony in the space.
For more tips on hanging artwork above a sofa, check out this related blog post, Easy tips for hanging pictures above a couch. You can also learn more about our Hang & Level™ picture hanging tool, and shop online at UTR Decorating.
Have any other decorating questions? Email us at questions@utrdecorating.com and we’ll do our best to help you Create the home you love™
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-The UTR Team On
Hi Pam! That’s a great question. When we’re decorating we first set our furniture where we want it. Once the furniture is in place then no matter if you are hanging a gallery of multiple items or a single image, center the picture or arrangement with the furniture piece and hang the decor close enough to the furniture so the two are anchored together. This will create a balanced look and focal point when you enter the room. Happy decorating! -The UTR Team
Pam On
What if your wall is extremely large and your sofa and piano force everything off center. I want to do a gallery wall with a rather large mirror as the center. But my sofa is left of center. There will be many more pictures too? Plus it’s a vaulted ceiling pitching the center point directly up in an inverted V
-The UTR Team On
Hi Des! That’s a great question. What we do is find a single piece of artwork or multiple pieces that fit a footprint that is a minimum of 2/3 the width of the couch, but no longer than the couch – and then we hang it low enough so the picture and the couch look to be anchored together. This way the artwork and furniture create a focal point in the room. If the artwork is larger than the couch, it often can feel a bit too heavy looking and out of balance. Having said this, decorating your space is all about making it your own. And, if it looks good to you to have artwork that is larger than the couch, then go for it! Happy decorating! -The UTR Team
Des On
I have a townhome with one massive wall from kitchen to the living and 14’ ceilings. My couch is 94”. I need large art for the “living area” is it okay to have art that is wider than the couch since the wall is expansive?
The UTR Team On
Hi there, thanks for reaching out. That’s a great question. Generally speaking, we try and align artwork with a piece of furniture, even if that piece of furniture is not centred on the wall. This approach is the same when dealing with a space that has been divided by something other than walls, for example by furniture arrangement or coffered ceilings. Whenever you walk into the space, your brain will look for balance in the space. Aligning the artwork with the furniture arrangement or in the middle of the space will make it look more balanced. That’s the approach we’d take, but at the end of the day, whatever looks good to you is the ‘right’ answer!