At Spade and Archer Design Agency we love to hang a series of art in a stairwell.
A “series” is different pieces of artwork all in the same frame. Generally we hang a piece of art every third stair horizontally. We then hang that piece 57 inches above the finished stair. This way the corners of the artwork will form an invisible line that is parallel to the angle of the staircase itself. The end effect is clean, crisp and efficient looking without distracting from the staircase itself.
At Spade and Archer Design Agency we almost always hang artwork above the sofa if we can.
Note, sometimes there is a window or no wall behind the sofa, thus art would not work there. There are a few rules here. We use a piece, or pieces of art that combined are, at least 50% as visually large as the sofa but no more than 100% as large as the sofa. In this shot we can see the artwork is about 75% as large as the sofa. We center the artwork on the sofa, and hang the artwork about 4” above the back of the sofa to the bottom of the artwork. Note, 4 inches about the size of your fist from the pinky to the thumb.
At Spade and Archer Design Agency we have made grided artwork a main stay. The art grid uses a few of the most basic design principles like rhythm, repetition, and scale to bring out the beauty in even the simplest piece of art. When hanging a grid use these guidelines to insure a successful adventure.
1. Figure out how many pieces you want the grid to have then buy that many of the same frame. If the frames are all the same, the mats can be cut at different sizes to accommodate the art. We like to use artwork that is all different but on one general theme like cars, surfers, or black and white landscapes.
2. Determine your spacing and use it for both the horizontal and vertical. If there is a six inch gap between two pieces next to each other, there should be a six inch gab between two pieces above and below one another.
3. Pretend that all the pieces combined make one piece of art. Then layout the outer edges of that piece both centered on the wall horizontally and 57” above the finished floor to the middle of the piece vertically
At Spade and Archer Design Agency our goal is to try to make every room look as big as possible while still having a human scale.
While we will often place a sofa near a wall, we will nearly never press it up against the wall, unless the room is so tight that we have to. We try to leave at least a 6” gap between the wall and the back of the sofa to make the space look a bit more relaxed. The last thing we want to see “perimeter staging.” It’s that thing in spaces where it feels like all the furniture was placed in the middle of the room, the room was spun really fast and all the furniture flew to the outer walls and stayed there. Furniture does not need to be anchored by a wall, let it breath, let it live, let it float.
Home staging with Spade and Archer Design Agency can be a bit different than interior design. With home staging we have to make sure the house is the star and the furnishings are back up dancers. The staging should be good, but it should not outshine the house itself.
When hanging a set, be sure to space them equal distant away from either each other or from the object they are splitting. In this case they have been hung with six inches on both the right and left side and at the same height as each other. We use the museum standard of hanging the middle of the art at eye level or 57” above the finished floor.
One of the biggest mistakes we see when hanging pairs of art is to hang out 5 or 6 inches higher than the other. While there is a time and place for this (we will explore this in hanging art in staircases) this rule should almost never be used in flat rooms.
