Cat Wall Art Above the Sofa

Art on the wall rarely fails because of the work, and often because of the height. Three printer’s rules for hanging a portrait — or any work at all.

Most work on the wall hangs too high. Museums hang at eye level: the centre of the work around one hundred and forty-five centimetres from the floor. At home it may be a touch more personal, but anyone hanging above the sofa keeps twenty to thirty centimetres between backrest and frame — higher, and the work floats loose from the furniture.

Then the size. A single work above a sofa carries best when it spans roughly two thirds of the seat’s width. Smaller work need not give way: three smaller portraits side by side — say our ten-by-fifteen beside a thirty-by-forty — form a single composition together, as long as the gaps between them stay equal.

One small work well hung beats three large ones hung badly.

And the light. Pigment ink on cotton paper is archival, but direct sunlight remains the enemy of any work on the wall — choose the wall the sun does not strike head-on, and the portrait will last for generations. A lamp grazing in from above at an angle does what our gallery spots do: it gives the coat depth.

Cat wall art, in short, need be no science. Eye level, two thirds, no full sun — and the cat now looks down on you, exactly as she always felt she should.

— the atelier