Hook height and group layout
Reference

Hook height and group layout

Two calculators: how high the hook goes for a center height you choose, and where every frame in a grid, row, pair or salon group lands on the wall.

The first box is arithmetic on a formula two institutions publish. The second is arithmetic on a spacing figure you choose, with the published spacing figures printed beside the answer. Neither one knows your room: lay the group out on the floor and photograph it before you drill, which is the one planning step a museum actually publishes. Your wall draws the same thing to scale.

  1. Hook height for one picture
  2. Where every frame in a group lands

1. Hook height for one picture

Measure the frame's outside height and the drop from the top of the frame to the taut wire or the top of the D-ring. Choose a center height. Height explains where the figures come from.

Assumptions

  • The formula is published by two institutions and is the same in both: half the frame's height, minus the drop from the top of the frame to the hanging point, plus the center line. A museum educator's slides work it as a 30 inch piece with hardware 5 inches down, giving 57 plus 10, so the nail goes at 67 inches; an art school's gallery standard sheet works the same arithmetic at 58 inches with two D-rings and two hooks. Convention
  • The center height is an input, not a rule. Four institutions publish a figure and they disagree: 57 inches called the accessible standard by an arts commission with an art museum; 57 to 60 called the rule of thumb most art galleries follow, worked at 58 by a university gallery; around 57 to 60 by an art museum; and 150 cm, called the gallery golden rule, by an online gallery. Convention
  • The one body in the research whose guidance is of standards character never says 57 at all. The Smithsonian Guidelines for Accessible Exhibition Design, 2011 edition and confirmed current on the institution's own codes and standards register, puts small items at no higher than 40 inches to the center line, gives a seated adult wheelchair user's eye level as 43 to 51 inches, and calls a 54 inch label center line optimum for everyone. Those figures are lower than all four conventions, and they are written for people the conventions do not consider. Physical principle
  • The gap above furniture has no publisher. A museum says only to adjust the height upwards over furniture and gives no figure. The 6 to 8 inch clearance that circulates comes from retailers and decorating pages; a hanging-system maker suggests roughly 6 to 12 inches, which is a maker's convention and not a standard. Preference
Fictional example

Priya Raman's framed print is 30 inches high with a wire that pulls taut 5 inches below the top. At a 58 inch center the hook goes at 68 inches, the top edge lands at 73 and the bottom at 43. Her console table is 30 inches high, so there are 13 inches of wall between the two. Known: the frame and the console. Assumed: that 58 is the right center for a room she mostly stands in. Open: whether it reads better lower, which she settles by standing in the doorway and looking, not by arithmetic.

2. Where every frame in a group lands

Set the layout, the frame size and one gap, and the box returns the group's size, where it sits on the wall, and every frame's left edge, bottom edge and hook height. Spacing explains the figures.

Assumptions

  • A group is hung as one object, with one center line for the whole block. That is the one thing the museum sources agree on: an arts commission with an art museum says to treat a salon group as one big artwork and still use a center line, and an art school's sheet says the center of each piece or grouping is 58 inches from the floor. Convention
  • Published spacing figures, none of them agreeing: about 2 to 6 inches for a salon wall from a museum educator; at least a one or two inch margin around each piece from an art museum's own salon wall guide; at least 3 centimeters from a gallery's salon hang guide. Convention
  • The grid gap default of 3 inches is ours. The 2 to 3 inch figure that circulates for grids has no publisher at all; it appears only on retailer and decorating pages, one of which scales it to frame size with no source. Preference
  • The group-to-furniture width comparison is reported as a percentage and nothing more. The two-thirds-of-the-furniture-width rule has no publisher; one page credits a design body for it with no citation, and this manual does not repeat that attribution. Preference
  • The box assumes every frame is the same size, because that is the arithmetic it can do honestly. Mixed sizes are the normal case and they are a drawing problem rather than a formula problem: use the largest size here for the block, then move the odd ones in Your wall.
  • Not modeled: a salon wall's deliberate irregularity, sight lines from where people sit, a wall that is not flat, or anything about which picture should go where.
Fictional example

The values above are the Okonkwos' wall: fourteen 16 by 20 inch frames in two rows of seven, 3 inch gaps, on a 150 inch wall above a 7 foot sofa. The block comes out 130 inches wide, which leaves 10 inches of wall each side and overhangs the sofa by more than two feet. Two frames come out and it becomes two rows of six at 111 inches. Known: the frames, the wall and the sofa. Assumed: that 3 inches is the right gap, which is our default and not anyone's figure. Open: which two photographs come down, which is theirs to settle.

Limits

Both boxes do arithmetic on numbers you chose. The formula in the first one is published; the height it works from is a convention with four different published values, and the one body publishing guidance of standards character puts the useful band lower. The second box's spacing default is ours. Nothing here says a wall will look right, and the floor layout and the photograph are still the step that settles it.