michaelharley.net sysop: michael · est. 2012

How to hang 2 pictures on a wall evenly

4 min read

We're still unpacking after our move to Nashville, and on Saturday we spent a few hours hanging pictures.

I feel kind of dumb in retrospect but I just couldn't figure out how to hang two pictures on a wall evenly. I wanted the space between the edge of the wall and the space between the pictures to be the same, and I could eyeball it, but I couldn't verify it. Ugh. My mind kept wanting to divide the wall into thirds, measure and hang. Here are the math steps to figure it out. I'll use my specific measurements as examples.

A 98 inch wall with two 21.5 inch pictures hung on the one-third and two-third marks. The gaps at each wall edge measure 21.9 inches, but the gap between the two pictures measures only 11.2 inches, so the spacing looks wrong. 98" wall 21.9" 11.2" 21.9" 21.5" 21.5"
Dividing the wall into thirds and hanging on the marks. The middle gap comes out barely half the size of the edge gaps, which is the thing that had been bugging me.
  1. Measure your wall. Our wall was 98 inches.
  2. Measure the width of your pictures and add that together. We had two pictures of the same size and they were 21.5 inches wide so 21.5 + 21.5 = 43 inches.
  3. Subtract the width of your pictures in step 2 from the width of your wall. 98 - 43 = 55. We now know that we have 55 inches of space that's not covered by a picture.
  4. Now divide the number of spaces into the amount of free space from step 3 (55 inches). Since there are two pictures, we have three spaces. So 55 / 3 = 18.33. That 18 1/3 inches is every gap: wall to picture, picture to picture, and picture back to wall.
  5. Since our pictures are 21.5 inches wide, I just divided 21.5 / 2 to find the center point on the frame (10 3/4 inches) and added that to the amount of space determined in step 4 so 18.33 + 10.75 = 29.08 inches. So I measured 29 inches from the left of my wall and made a mark. I did the same thing from the right edge of the wall and placed my hangers and hung my picture frames and they were evenly spaced.
The same 98 inch wall with the two 21.5 inch pictures spaced so that all three gaps, the two wall edges and the space between the pictures, measure 18 and one third inches. 98" wall 18 1/3" 18 1/3" 18 1/3" 21.5" 21.5"
What steps 1 through 4 get you: three identical gaps. Check it by adding them back up, 18 1/3 + 21.5 + 18 1/3 + 21.5 + 18 1/3 = 98.
The same evenly spaced wall, showing that the 18 and one third inch gap plus the 10 and three quarter inch half width of the frame puts the center of the left picture 29 and one twelfth inches from the wall edge. 18 1/3" 10 3/4" 29 1/12" to the center mark mirror from the right edge
Step 5. The tape measure wants a single number from the wall edge, so add the gap to half the frame width. I rounded 29 1/12 down to 29 inches and nobody has ever noticed.

None of this is specific to two pictures. The whole thing is one formula:

gap = (wall width − combined picture width) ÷ (number of pictures + 1)

Three pictures on that same wall means four gaps instead of three, and everything else works the same way.

Two things I didn't think about at the time. Step 5 only works because both of our frames were the same width. If yours are different sizes, add half of each picture's own width to get its center mark. And that mark is the center of the frame, which is only where the hook goes if you're using a single centered hanger. Two D-rings, or a wire that pulls off center when the picture hangs, need the hook measured on its own.

I wish I had paid better attention in grade school math.

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