A large framed piece under glass is heavier than most people expect, and the hook that came in a drawer of odds and ends isn't the right way to hold it up. Hanging heavy art well takes about twenty minutes longer than hanging it badly. Here's the order I do it in.
1. How much does it weigh?
Find out before you buy hardware. Where our product page lists the weight in Product details, use that number. For a piece you already own, stand on a bathroom scale holding it, then without it, and take the difference.
Glass is what makes a piece heavy: the same image behind glass in a wood frame can weigh several times what it weighs as a canvas. Size matters too, because glass grows with the square of the size. A piece twice as wide and twice as tall has four times the glass.
2. What's behind the wall?
There are three walls you'll meet in Canadian homes, and each takes different hardware:
- Drywall over wood studs: most houses and townhouses built in the last fifty years. Hollow between the studs.
- Plaster and lath: many older houses, including much of the pre-war housing stock in cities like Toronto and Montreal. Hard, and it cracks if you hammer into it.
- Concrete: many condo walls, especially the walls between units and the ones around the core. A nail won't go in.
Knock on the wall: drywall sounds hollow between studs, plaster sounds dull and hard, concrete sounds solid and doesn't flex. A stud finder confirms it.
3. How do you hang heavy art on drywall?
Into a stud, if you can. Studs in most Canadian walls sit every 16″ (41 cm) on centre. A screw into a stud is the strongest fixing you can make in drywall. Find the stud with a stud finder, or with a small nail in a spot the art will cover.
Where there's no stud, use an anchor rated for the job. Every anchor and picture hook prints a weight rating on its package. I use hardware rated for at least twice the weight of the piece, because ratings assume ideal conditions and a frame that's bumped puts more load on the hook than it does hanging still. For heavy pieces, toggle-style anchors, which open behind the drywall, hold far more than plastic plugs.
4. Why two hooks?
For anything over about 36″ (91 cm) wide, over about 10 lb (4.5 kg), or under glass, use two hooks, level with each other, about a third of the frame's width in from each side. Two hooks halve the load on each one, stop the piece from swinging crooked, and mean one failing doesn't bring the whole thing down.
5. How do you hang art on plaster?
Drill, never hammer. A hammered nail cracks plaster and the crack spreads. Put a strip of painter's tape over the spot, drill a pilot hole through the tape with a masonry bit, then use a screw into the lath behind, or an anchor made for plaster. Old plaster walls are often strong once you're into the lath; it's getting through the plaster cleanly that matters.
If your house has a picture rail, the moulding running round the room a foot or so below the ceiling, use it: hooks that sit over the rail and a cord or wire down to the frame mean no holes at all.
6. How do you hang art on a concrete wall?
With a hammer drill, a masonry bit and a plug sized to the screw. It's noisy, and in a condo your building may have quiet hours for drilling, so check your building's rules first. Some condos also need permission for holes in walls between units. If you rent, Art for renters has options that need no drilling: a ledge mounted once, or leaning.
7. How do you get it level?
Mark both hook positions with a level before drilling, not after. Measure the drop from the top of the frame to each hanging point; on a wire, pull it taut upward as it will hang and measure to the peak. Then place each hook at your chosen height plus half the piece's height minus that drop. The hanging guide has the arithmetic.
For anything large, hang it with two people: one holds, one checks the level and guides the hooks.
Next step
Check the weight and the hardware in Product details on the piece you're considering, then see it on your wall at approximate scale in Your Blank Wall.
Questions we get asked
No. Strips are for small, light, unglazed pieces. Glass and weight are exactly what they're not for.
Each product page lists the hanging hardware in the Hardware row of Product details.
It can, with two hooks into studs or rated anchors and nothing improvised. The bed guide has my rules for art above where someone sleeps.