Living with Art · 2 min read

Dining Room Wall Art: Height, Size and Mood

July 2024

Listen to this story3 min

The dining room is the one room where everyone sits still, together, facing the walls. That changes how high to hang a painting, how big it should be, and even what it should show.

Hang it for people sitting down

In most rooms, the center of a painting looks best about 57 inches (145 cm) from the floor, roughly the eye level of someone standing. But at the table, your eyes are lower.

The Smithsonian's guidelines for accessible exhibitions place the average eye level of an adult man who uses a wheelchair between 43 and 51 inches, and treat 54 inches as the best center line for labels read both seated and standing.¹ On an open dining-room wall, that is a sensible target.

Above a sideboard

When a sideboard or buffet stands under the art, measure from the furniture, not the floor. Leave 7 to 10 inches (18 to 25 cm) between its top and the bottom of the canvas, so the two read as one group.²

For width, aim for about two-thirds of the sideboard.³ Narrower looks lost; wider crowds the lamps and candlesticks.

Try it

How wide should the art be?

Width of the sideboard or table

Result

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Casopra canvas Crust of Light hung low beside a farmhouse table with a loaf of bread — In the photo: Crust of Light, a Casopra canvas.

Low and close

In a small dining nook, a vertical canvas hung beside the table, at the eye level of a seated guest, can feel more intimate than a big piece high on the wall.

Keep it a little away from the edge of the table, so chairs and elbows don't brush it.

What to hang where people eat

Painters have been setting tables on canvas for centuries. In 1635, in Haarlem, Willem Claesz Heda painted oysters, a lemon, beer and a silver cup: a table that, in The Met's words, “invites the viewer to associate visual and culinary pleasure.”⁴

Willem Claesz Heda, Still Life with Oysters, a Silver Tazza, and Glassware, 1635 — Willem Claesz Heda, *Still Life with Oysters, a Silver Tazza, and Glassware*, 1635. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Bequest of Rita Markus, 2005. Public domain.

Look closer, though, and the cup has tipped over, a glass is broken, and a cone of paper torn from an almanac holds the spices: reminders of how quickly time passes.⁴ Heda achieved all of it almost entirely in shades of gray.⁴

“I don't think this would be an easy painting to live with.”
The poet Mark Doty on Heda's still life, in The Met's audio guide

That is the dining-room question in one line. Food, fruit, wine and flowers are natural subjects at the table; calm palettes help conversation. Keep the unsettling pieces for a hallway, where people pass rather than linger for two hours.

Shop the story

A table set in paint

Fruit, bowls and wine: four vertical canvases that are easy to live with.

Ramen Reverie II

Vine Whisper

Crimson Momentum III

Grape Velvet Momentum

See dining room art

Back to La Maison Casopra

Hang it for people sitting down

Above a sideboard

How wide should the art be?

Low and close

What to hang where people eat

A table set in paint

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