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I hung my gallery wall 9 inches too high for 2 years, and a 6 year old showed me why
For two years I had nine frames in my hallway hung at what I thought was the perfect eye level height. Last month my neighbor's daughter, who is 6, walked through and asked why all my pictures were up near the ceiling. I laughed it off until I got out a tape measure and saw my center row sat at 68 inches from the floor. Our ceilings are 9 feet, so I had hung them at door frame height out of some habit I picked up moving between rentals. The tip off was really that everyone who visited would look up, then back at me, then up again, and I kept blaming the hallway light. I took all nine down, patched 11 holes, and rehung them so the middle row sits 57 inches up, which is closer to normal eye level when you are standing and chatting. The difference in how the space feels is silly, the frames finally look like they belong on the wall instead of floating above it. If you are second guessing your layout, grab someone shorter than you to stand in the hall and point at where their eyes land.
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the_sandra1mo ago
The 57 inch rule comes from museum hanging standards, where the center of the art sits at 57 inches because that is the average eye level for a standing adult. Your 68 inches was the problem, since that is closer to where you would hang something above a door or a couch. Small fix but it explains why everyone kept glancing up, because their necks were telling them something was off before their brains caught up.
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