July 15th, 2010 
Living area after - 5707 Callcott Way
For those who read my column on AskMissA.com, you may not realize that my company, JA Frank Design, helps clients with projects like interior design, art selection, real estate and property staging. One of my property staging clients is Sita Kapur, owner of Arlington Premier Realty.
Our latest staging project involved a townhouse-type, two level property located in Alexandria, Virginia. It has two bedrooms, 2-1/2 baths and a bonus loft area with deck. The challenge for me was to rework the space creating focal points by using the owner’s furniture and then bringing in my own accent pieces. This home owner had a lot of artwork. I made a mental inventory of the art and repositioned each piece around the house. Most people hang artwork too high on the wall. My rule of thumb for hanging artwork: the average
Before photos - 5707 Callcott Way
woman is 5’4” in height, hang the artwork basically at eye level. The eye naturally gravitates down, so hanging artwork higher than your natural gaze tends to create a strain.
The mirror in the living area was hung by the home owner a little too high. . .it loses its connection to the furniture grouping, but in this case, it was too heavy to re-hang, so we left it in place. By creating other “connected” focal points around the room, the mirror height was not that noticeable.
Focal point - 5707 Callcott Way
Loft area after - 5707 Callcott Way
"Music Room" after - 5707 Callcott Way
To view this listing, click here.
For more information on this property, please contact Sita Kapur at sita@sitakapur.com
Joyce,
Thanks for your good advice on hanging artwork. You make a great point about hanging the artwork at eye-level. I was always taught that too, and it makes the rooms and artwork much more engaging and enjoyable to actually have your viewers able to see and enjoy the pictures more easily. It can also draw the viewer in to feel like they are more a part of the artwork, too.
I recently had a very long Monet water lily poster framed because I wanted to hang it in my apartment. Because it was so tall, I wasn’t sure exactly where to place it but I ended up placing it in between two pieces of furniture, a round table with a tablecloth in my living room, and my T.V. stand, which sits diagonally in a corner. I hung it so the bottom of it comes just slightly above the round table, and is also even with the top corner of the T.V. stand, to fit nicely centered between them, while filling in the white space on the wall there. It can be seen better too, because it isn’t competing with anything and fills in the gap on the wall at the same time. The only hard part was getting the picture hangers evenly spaced and nailed into the wall to support it! I guess the best thing to do is use a ruler and mark the places where you are going to put the nails in, or put a line on the wall with a pencil, so you can see where to hammer them, without making them uneven.
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