Whether vacation photos, landscapes, family portraits, or art prints: The right pictures are what make your home feel inviting and give it an individual ambiance. But how should you hang your pictures to showcase them to their best advantage?

Hanging Pictures: Consider the Artwork’s Surroundings

For the pictures to harmonize with the furniture, the size proportions must be right: While a format that is too small gets lost above a bulky piece of furniture, a large format can quickly appear too dominant. Your subjects stand out particularly well in front of a brightly painted wall. It looks cohesive when similar colors appear on the walls, in the pictures, and in various home accessories or furnishings. While you generally can’t go wrong with a white background, your pictures often do not stand out properly in front of patterned or multicolored walls. An eye-catching frame or a mat can help. If you do not want to hang a picture in the center of one side of a wall but rather offset to the side, you should make sure to create a visual counterbalance with another piece of furniture or home accessory. While vertical arrangements make your walls appear higher, horizontal groupings create the impression that a room is wider.

Inspiration: The Most Beautiful Hanging Styles

First lay out potential arrangements on the floor or sketch your arrangement on paper before hanging the pictures. There are twelve different hanging styles that give every room an artistic flair.

1. Make a Statement in the Room: The Soloist

One wall, one picture. A particularly unusual or cherished subject deserves a place of honor. Whether a large-format canvas or a small art print: When an entire wall belongs to the subject alone, it attracts everyone’s attention. Keep in mind that you should create visual balance with your furnishings and maintain the right size proportions.

2. Fill an Entire Wall with the St. Petersburg Hanging Style

The St. Petersburg hanging style is also commonly called salon hanging or “organized chaos.” Numerous closely spaced subjects cover almost an entire wall. The name of this hanging style comes from the richly decorated walls of the St. Petersburg Hermitage. Although the St. Petersburg hanging style ignores picture axes, it does have other elements that connect the pictures: These can be subjects with a stylistically similar approach to interpretation, identical or similar frames, mats, or similar formats. A connecting element thus brings a certain calm to the arrangement, so that “chaos” meets “order.”

3. Classic and Stylish: The Row Arrangement

Whether arranged vertically or horizontally in a line, the row arrangement is a classic form of picture arrangement. If you want to use formats of different sizes, you have two options when hanging the pictures: You can either arrange the pictures edge-aligned or arrange them so that the centers of the pictures lie on an imaginary center line. Before drilling, you should first arrange all possible variations on the floor.

4. Clear Lines with Edge-Aligned Hanging

With edge-aligned hanging, the corners and edges of all pictures are oriented along an imaginary center line. The spaces between pictures should always be equal, although they may vary both horizontally and vertically. To achieve an optimal result, you should first position the group of pictures on the floor. Painter’s tape or a horizontally stretched string can then make hanging easier. When hanging the pictures, a level helps with alignment.

5. Hang Pictures and Create Harmony: The Grid Arrangement

Similar to a chessboard, the individual pictures in a grid arrangement are arranged in a strict, geometric pattern. The frames of your pictures should hang along one line, and the spaces between the pictures should be the same on all sides. A grid arrangement looks best when all the subjects have the same format. Matching frames create a cohesive overall picture.

6. “Inside the Lines”—A Hanging Style for Creative Aesthetes

With an inside-the-lines arrangement, the pictures hang casually on the wall. Uniform spacing, sight lines, and edges do not have to be maintained. Nevertheless, for the group of pictures to look harmonious, you should arrange your pictures within an imaginary geometric shape. This can be a circle, oval, rectangle, or square. When hanging the pictures, start with the largest subjects and arrange all the other subjects around them one after another.

7. Create a Sense of Calm with a Symmetrical Arrangement

The human eye perceives symmetry as harmonious—and this also applies to groups of pictures. To arrange a symmetrical display, you need at least three artworks, two of which have the same format. First establish a vertical or horizontal axis of symmetry. The positions and mounting points of the pictures should then be measured meticulously, as irregularities are particularly noticeable with this hanging style.

8. Don’t Hang All the Pictures: The Picture Ledge

Picture ledges can be arranged with interchangeable subjects and simultaneously give your walls more structure. You can also combine your freestanding group of pictures with small home accessories or furnishings and place them next to the subjects. The big advantage: Picture ledges can easily be redecorated and rearranged.

9. Different Perspectives for More Variety

One picture—different perspectives. A special effect can be achieved when different views of the same subject are shown. This form of arrangement is possible as a row or edge-aligned arrangement, as a symmetrical arrangement, or as a corner arrangement.

10. A Multipart Work/Triptych for a Panoramic View

A work consisting of several individual pictures is known as a triptych. For the picture composition to be shown to its best advantage, the individual fragments of the multipart work should be arranged as much as possible in a row, edge-aligned, and with only a small gap between them.

11. Hang Pictures to Connect Rooms: The Corner Arrangement

The corner arrangement offers the viewer a genuine surprise effect, as the picture composition only becomes apparent when looking around the corner. For the arrangement to have the best possible effect, you should make sure that the pictures complement one another and do not differ too much in shape or size. Different perspectives of the same subject are also suitable here.

12. Show Special Moments with a Collage

A collage is a popular stylistic device in the visual arts. In keeping with the famous quote by the philosopher Aristotle—“The whole is greater than the sum of its parts”—the final group of pictures in a collage consists of numerous different individual subjects. Whether photo prints, postcards, or art prints: You can combine whatever you like to create your own individual overall artwork. You can arrange all the pictures close together on the wall or on a backing board. A framed group of pictures is also possible.

Extra Tip: Always Hang Pictures at Eye Level

These hanging variations give every room a unique flair. To ensure that the pictures look their best, you should always hang them at eye level. Consider whether you want to view your pictures while seated—for example, from the sofa—or primarily while standing or passing by. As a general rule, you should use lines as a guide when hanging pictures. These can either be lines already present in the room—for example, outlines formed by door frames, furniture, or window edges—or imaginary guide lines.