The most common mistake people make when buying a fine art print is not choosing the wrong image — it is choosing the wrong size. Too small, and the work disappears into the room. Too large, and it overwhelms everything around it. Getting the scale right is the difference between a print that transforms a room and one that you stop noticing after a week.
Here is how I think about it — and how I advise collectors who ask me for help.
Start with the room, not the wall
The most common mistake is to photograph only the wall where the print will hang and ask: how big should this be? That tells me very little. Before I can advise on size, I want to see the whole room. What colours are used? What furniture is in front of the wall? Is this a space where people pass through quickly, or somewhere they sit and stay? Does the morning sun come in from the left or the right?
A print in a busy hallway functions differently from a print above a sofa in a quiet living room. A bedroom print is seen every morning in soft light; an office print is seen under artificial light for eight hours a day. The room shapes everything.
I also look at the accent colours already in the space. My prints often work best when they echo something already present — a warm ochre, a quiet grey, a hint of violet. The photograph becomes part of the room's language.
The golden rules of hanging height
Museums and galleries have refined the art of hanging over centuries, and their standard is worth following. The centre of the print — not the top, not the bottom — should hang at eye level: between 145 and 152 cm from the floor. This is where the human eye rests naturally, and it is where the work is seen at its best.
Solo print on a wall: centre at 145–152 cm from the floor.
Print above a sofa or sideboard: the bottom of the frame should sit 20–25 cm above the top of the furniture — close enough to feel connected, with enough breathing space to read as its own object.
Multiple prints together: treat the group as a single unit and hang its centre at eye height. The individual works can be spaced 5–8 cm apart.
What size actually sells — and why
My most frequently sold size is 35 × 45 cm. It is intimate, personal, and works in almost any domestic room without demanding too much of the space. It is the size you return to — the one you look at properly rather than past.
But I have also sold prints at 150 × 100 cm. Those are statement works — for a specific wall in a specific room where scale is part of the intention. When a large print works, it really works. The flower fills your peripheral vision. You are inside the photograph rather than in front of it.
Neither is better. The question is always: what does this particular room ask for?
One print, or several?
Sometimes the right answer is not one large print but two or three smaller ones in conversation with each other. Works from the same series can reinforce each other — the quiet repetition of a motif creates a different kind of presence than a single image. And occasionally the most interesting combinations are works by different artists that happen to share a colour, a mood, a silence.
If you are unsure, send me photographs of your space. I have yet to encounter a room that did not have an answer.