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About this tool
Work out nail height, frame spacing and hook rating for single pictures and gallery walls using the 145 cm gallery centre line.
This wall art hanging calculator converts a frame's dimensions and its wire drop into the exact height to drive the nail, so the centre of the artwork lands on the 145 cm (57 in) gallery centre line museums use. It also handles the two cases that trip people up: hanging above a sofa or console, where the frame must clear the furniture by 15–25 cm, and hanging a row of frames, where every nail height is identical but the horizontal marks must be measured. Hook ratings are sized with a 2× safety factor on the artwork weight.
Open Wall Art Hanging Calculator on AltFTool — it loads instantly in your browser.
Enter the values you already know.
Fine-tune the options to match your scenario.
Read the result and use it in your planning or reporting.
A slack wire is why frames end up hung too high — the calculator subtracts the measured drop.
Automatically raises the piece when a sofa or headboard would crowd its bottom edge.
Gives left edge, centre and right edge for each frame in a row, measured from one end of the wall.
Put the centre of the artwork 145 cm (57 in) above the floor — the standard gallery and museum centre line, which matches average adult eye level. In rooms where people are usually seated, such as a dining room, dropping it a few centimetres often looks better.
Nail height = artwork centre height + half the frame height − the wire drop. Measure the wire drop by pulling the wire taut toward the top of the frame and measuring down from the top edge. For a 60 cm frame with an 8 cm drop hung on the 145 cm line, the nail goes at 167 cm.
Leave 15–25 cm of clear wall between the top of the sofa back and the bottom of the frame; 20 cm is the usual choice. Below 15 cm the arrangement looks crowded, and above 25 cm the art stops reading as connected to the furniture.
Between 5 cm and 10 cm, with 7.5 cm (3 in) the common default. Keep the same gap throughout — uneven gaps are far more noticeable than uneven frame sizes, which is why gallery walls of mismatched frames still look deliberate when spacing is consistent.
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