Seattle Sun Newspaper - Vol. 8, Issue 1, January 2004

Copyright 2003 Seattle Sun. Please feel free to use the article below in your research. Be sure to cite the Seattle Sun as your source.

DECORATING DILEMMAS:

What to do about art?

By ROBIN DALY

Q: "Dear, Robin, I'm not sure if my partner and I need couple's counseling or a designer! We cannot agree on where or how to hang our artwork, so instead of arguing again we just have empty walls. Help!"

A: I have always said, and only half-jokingly, most successful designers are therapists. They must be able to bridge the gap between a variety of perspectives (without choosing sides!), and they must do this while striving to transform a space into a work of beauty.

So if you are at each other's throats over who gets to use the stud finder, then a designer could very well turn into a wise investment for your relationship. There are two ways you could approach this: leave the house and let the designer have free reign over all the art placement, or stick around and participate in the discussion of where each piece will be mounted.

In your case, I know which option I'd suggest!

If you feel the relationship is strong enough to tackle all this without intervention, I have some tips for you to keep in mind. First of all, my personal pet peeve has to do with the fact that most of us hang everything TOO HIGH. Art should be at eye level, not at the top-of-your-head level. This is an especially irksome practice in rooms where most of our time is spent SITTING DOWN.

For example, when installing art over a chair or sofa, make sure the bottom of the frame is four inches or LESS from the furniture. This can seem very scary when you are used to hanging things higher than four inches. But trust me. Really.

Most of us have a variety of family photos, and we want to do something with them without it looking like "grandma's collection" you know, ugly drugstore or collage frames. But that to do?

I like to use a unifying theme when making a family photo wall, and the best way to achieve this is with frames that are of the same color. This does not mean that they all have to "match" yuck, please don't do that! But they do have to coordinate in "spirit." You can have a variety of frame styles, but have them all mounted in a copper or rustic finish for example. Or perhaps you want a sleeker look, so they are all arranged in a black finish.

When creating this wall of memories, there are some tricks to getting the layout correct before hitting the wall with the hammer. First, arrange all the pictures on the floor; pretending it's the wall. This allows you to visualize the whole job and rearrange until things feel right.

While doing this, try to balance the visual weight of the frames. Keep the larger pieces towards the center, and the smaller pieces floating on the outside.

The spacing between frames should be one inch, maybe less. Again all I can say is trust me on this, because we tend to mount things too far from each other, and we need to think of this wall as a unified whole. Hey, was I wrong about the picture over the sofa?

Avoid the pitfalls of trapped white space. What does that mean? When creating a photo wall, you have frames in a variety of sizes, and when you lay them out on the floor, try very hard to make sure you don't leave any funky squares of plain wall in the middle of your layout. If you find you have this, then you need to keep rearranging things until it goes away.

In my tool chest I do have the aforementioned stud-finder, a hammer and power screwdriver, plus a box filled with all types and sizes of picture hanging hardware. You can easily pick these things up at the local hardware store. If you have everything pulled out before you begin, everything will go much smoother.