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A Starter Guide to Interior Decorating

  • by Arthur Harrison
  • 8 min read

At Picture Hang Solutions, we’re all about picture hanging, which often overlaps with the much broader topic of interior decorating. After all, hanging pictures on the wall is an age-old practice in interior design and human culture, whether it’s in our homes, our workspaces, and any other space we frequent.

a man and woman displaying a picture on a wall

We’ve touched on decorating subjects where picture hanging and hanging hardware are relevant while going beyond simple picture hanging. When is overall interior decor relevant to the practice of hanging pictures? Does picture hanging hardware have a use in decorating outside pictures? What decor trends should you look out for?


This guide will be your starting point to interior decorating, where you’ll learn about what we’ve covered to answer these questions. Together we’ll discuss how picture hanging and interior decor inevitably influence each other and discover hanging hardware in a new light. We’ll also look into the best decorating practices as recommended by the pros, and thus expand the picture hanging world as you know and experience it.

Picture Hanging & Interior Decorating

It’s simple: if you are hanging pictures on the wall, you may also be decorating the rest of the room, or at least a part of it.


Unless you are mounting artwork in a museum or for an art exhibition, where the process is almost exclusively focused on picture hanging, your display will be created in the context of a room’s design and decor. A room’s design can affect a picture wall in several ways and vice versa. The size of a room, for instance, will dictate how many pictures you can put up or how big they should be. A gallery wall framed in white, on the other hand, may not stand out in a room with all-white walls.

collage of brass gallery rods and the rods used to display hanging plant decor next to a bathtub

While picture hanging hardware is designed for the ideal purpose of hanging and displaying pictures, a number of them are quite versatile and are excellent hardware for other hanging needs. French cleats, for one, are heavy lifters, which makes them highly reliable for mounting mirrors, even bulky ones. Gallery systems, while designed for creating large gallery displays, can even be used to decorate a room with hanging plants.


There are entire hardware categories dedicated to hanging needs outside picture hanging, such as hanging office signs, overhead banners, decorative plates, or everyday items. This further widens the extent to which mere picture hanging and interior decorating overlap.


With various display styles and decor trends in vogue, picture hanging and interior decorating in fact often go hand in hand, like with the ever-popular gallery wall or salon hang, which has evolved to embrace non-art decor as much as fine art. Special or seasonal occasions that call for decor revamps also reflect this natural incorporation of pictures in interior decor. 


The conversation at Picture Hang Solutions on this coalescence branches out into two genres: inspirational and informative.

Interior Decorating Inspiration

Decor inspo is all about the most relevant and interesting developments in the multiple design movements happening at any time. We bring the lowdown on trends, draw up decor comparisons, and concoct fresh ideas for every decor cycle, i.e. holiday periods, seasonal overhauls—all, of course, complete with hardware recommendations to make it all possible.

Interior Decorating How-To Guides

Undertakings that hone in on a specific piece of decor are tackled in our how-tos. These guides also cover the hanging solutions you need specifically for hanging non-picture decor and for the upkeep of your overall wall and interior decor, at home or elsewhere.

Now with these two topic groups in mind, it’s time to learn about the most useful tips that will guide you in any decorating project in the next section, whether you’re trying out a new interior design trend of 2025 or opting for a tabletop picture display in your kitchen.

10 Pro Tips for Hanging Interior & Home Decor

From painting your walls to picking out decor for display and furnishing your rooms, decorating your space can feel like a never-ending to-do list. One of the things you’ll inevitably deal with is decorating your walls, since they’re the go-to spot for hanging decor. A bare wall makes for a clean and simple look, but a nicely decorated wall is even better.


Whether it’s a quick makeover or a design overhaul, there’s so much you can do with wall hanging decor. So we’ve filtered through the barrage of home decor info out there to put together some of the most relevant tips and streamline the process of hanging decor not just on your walls, but also for other places in the room—like the ceiling, for instance. Let this ultimate list of pro tips serve as your go-to reference for any decorating endeavor!

1. Lower your artwork

At some point, you’ve probably hung up pictures or art on your wall, and chances are you probably hung them up too high. This is a common mistake many people make.


So what’s too high and what’s just the right height?

Young couple arranging an artwork on the wall
Image courtesy of Envato

Keeping your wall-mounted pictures and art at eye level for most people is key. This means positioning it at about 60 inches from the floor. If you’re a bit shorter, lowering it to 57 inches is quite acceptable, and if you want it a bit higher, going for up to 62 inches is a good call. As a rule of thumb, art hanging above furniture should have between 3-8 inches of space from your desk or couch.

2. Don’t push furniture against the wall

This may seem counterintuitive, but you don’t really have to keep your furniture flush against the wall.


Try arranging your furniture pieces so that they’re a few feet away from the wall instead. This works with sofas, tables, dressers, and chairs. Placing your furnishings toward the middle of the room gives it the illusion of more space, making it feel bigger.

A living room with a couch in the center and a shelving unit behind it
Image courtesy of Envato 

But if you must push them against the wall, you can secure them with an anti-tip kit, especially bigger and heavier pieces of furniture where you store precious items. Find out more about security kits in this article: What is an Anti-Tip Kit and Why You Need Them

3. Mind where you hang your mirrors

Mirrors are a go-to decor piece for any space, but many people might not dedicate as much time considering their placement in a room compared to other decor.

A living room wall with mirrors of several sizes hanging
Image courtesy of LeylaCamomile (Envato)

When mounting a mirror, besides lighting, take note of what it will reflect in the position you hang it. Will it reflect the TV if you hang it beside the living room shelves? Will it reflect your bed when viewed from outside the window?


Try standing in the spot you want the mirror to hang from so you can see for yourself exactly what the mirror will be facing, and the result might even make your space seem bigger than it is.

4. Turn your collections into wall decor

Do you happen to have a collection of vinyl records, baseball cards, vintage movie posters from the 70s, or celebrity autographs? If you have any sort of personal collection, it’s a good decor idea that you can display proudly on your wall or on floating shelves you can install.

A man and a woman in front of a wall decorated with several fedora hats
Image courtesy of RDNE Stock project (Pexels)

A personal collection injects personality in your space and makes it feel more intimate, so you should definitely consider displaying it as part of your room decor.

5. Decorate your ceiling too

You’ve decorated your walls and transformed your floors, but have you ever thought of bringing life to your ceiling?


It’s more than possible—you can paint it a vibrant colorway or plaster it with an artsy wallpaper. This works especially if your walls are more muted or minimalistic in style to give your space an attractive contrast.

A living room with a couch in the center and hanging planters in the ceiling
Image courtesy of Skitterphoto (Pexels)
A pink room with pink chairs and a checkered ceiling in green, red, orange, pink, and white
Image courtesy of Anne Sage

Another idea is to fix hooks onto a drop ceiling if you have one and use them for hanging ceiling decor like plants, a non-traditional gallery of artwork, lighting fixtures, or other items you have in mind. You can even paint the ceiling panels as mentioned above or apply stains—feel free to get creative!


If you need more ideas, this article might help inspire you: Transform Your Drop Ceiling with These Creative Decor Ideas

6. Mix it up with your display height

If there’s anything that makes a promising decor hanging vision look bland in execution, it’s hanging everything at the same height.

Blue office walls with varied shelving heights and hanging artworks, demonstrating diverse display heights.
Image courtesy of Huseyn Kamaladdin (Pexels)

You don’t want your space to feel rigid or stiff, so try playing around with different levels of display height when mounting artwork, hanging decor, and arranging your furniture. Experimenting with various sizes, height levels, and shapes brings depth to a space and adds interest and variety.

7. Don’t forget your hidden walls

There’s your main decor and then there’s not-so-main decor that doesn’t really fit your aesthetic but is still indispensable to your daily life. Think appliances like TV and a speaker system. These items are the perfect addition to your “hidden walls.”

A vacant wall next to the door into the living room, save for a corner table holding a vase.
Image courtesy of Pixabay (Pexels)

Does your room have corners or spots that are a bit more visible than others but are left vacant? This is usually the wall where your door is, along with the closest adjacent wall. These blindspots are great places to keep decor that don’t necessarily fit your space’s design or can’t be reworked to fit a certain vibe.

8. Coordinate your frames

There’s a reason museums often frame everything in just about the same color: frames should help pull the observer into the artwork being framed, and not take away any emphasis for itself.

A curated living room color theme featuring blues and whites in pillows and artworks.
Image courtesy of Jean van der Meulen (Pexels)

Your frame color can be gold or monochromatic black or white, as long as they’re the same color across all your framed decor as much as possible.This doesn’t mean you can’t be flexible with other colors, though. A streamlined visual foundation allows you to establish a design for your space that you can be more experimental with later on.

9. Delight guests with wall figurines

Looking to add a unique charm to your living room or bedroom? Decorative figurines and sculptures might be right up your alley.

Three miniature human figurines climbing up a wall, suspended by wires.
Image courtesy of Wayfair

Not only are wall hanging figurines wonderful conversation starters, but they also transform uninspired walls by leaning away from typical home decor. Many wall-mounted figurines and sculptures are creative pieces that engage observers effortlessly, and they bring an imaginative and even whimsical flair that expresses your personality and style within a space.

10. Leave some space for white space

Whether you have a maximalist or minimalist style, white space is needed in every interior for balance. It’s essential to provide the eyes rest and your design breathing space.

A living room balancing mirrors, artworks, vases, and white space in its arrangement..
Image courtesy of Max Rahubovskiy (Pexels)

So if you have an unadorned corner or two, go ahead and feel free to leave it as it is. By leaving enough negative space in a room, you give guests and yourself more initiative to appreciate its design and the decor on display.

Final Thoughts

Picture hanging and interior decorating are much more closely intertwined than they seem, and hanging pictures is standard when decorating many kinds of interiors. The discussion surrounding these endeavors both inspire andinform us, even when we’re usually much more dedicated to picture hanging alone.


There’s also more to hanging wall decor than just mounting something on your wall. With this starter guide complete with the best wall decor tips, you can be more confident and unleash your creativity when hanging your decor no matter what or where it is. You’ll be hanging artwork and laying furniture like a pro before you know it!


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