A quick and easy way to hang wall art perfectly

As many of you know, Riley MacLean and I recently relocated our studio to a bigger, better location in downtown Durham... which in itself is an exciting blog post for a (near-)future date. Of course, one thing that anyone does when they move is hang things on the walls, and as photographers, we've been hanging a LOT of things. Somewhere along the way, we stumbled upon a trick to overcome one of the most challenging aspects of this task, particularly when the items being hung need to be level with each other, so I thought I'd venture off the photo-sharing path to blog this quick, easy, why-didn't-I-think-of-this-before trick that has made getting all these prints up soooooo much easier. (Forgive the iPhone photos... these are pure illustration, not art!) The problem: You've got either...

- a piece of art that has two separate hangers on the back requiring two nails, which have to be level with each other, or

- two or more pieces of art that need to be hung side by side - again, perfectly level with each other.

(My example below has both! When we hung these mirrors in the old studio, it took SEVERAL adjustments, a half a can of caulk, and a $#*+load of curse words to get them right.)

The solution:

1. If your art has two hangers, carefully cut a piece of painter's tape that extends from one hanger to the other:

2. Transfer that piece of tape to the spot on the wall where you want to hang the piece, and level the tape on the wall.

3. Using the tape as a guide, install hanging hardware, then hang the piece to double-check placement.

4. If you're hanging multiple pieces, repeat the process, checking each time to be sure that the hangers are the same distance apart, as well as the same distance from the top of the piece. Finally, measure the distance from the ceiling to the tape to ensure that each art piece hangs at the same height.

Using this method, we managed to get three mirrors hung perfectly (though that might be hard to see in the wide-angle photo below) in ten minutes with exactly zero extra holes in the wall. Success!

Anyone else have any good hanging tips? I've still got plenty to do... Have a great weekend!

xox,

annemie