The living room is where a work gets looked at most and chosen worst. The reason is that almost everyone starts from the wrong question — "what goes with the sofa?" — instead of the right one, which comes at the end of this article.
But first the practical rules, because they're real and they work.
1. Height: Centre at 145-150 cm
The most-broken rule and the easiest to keep. The centre of the work goes at roughly 145-150 cm from the floor — the eye level of a standing adult. It's the museum standard, and it works for a simple reason: that's the height the eye settles at on its own.
The near-universal error is hanging too high. If you have to lift your chin to look at the work, it's too high — and nothing else in the room will fix it.
Exception: above a sofa you come down. The bottom edge sits 20-25 cm above the backrest, otherwise the work and the sofa read as two disconnected objects.
2. Format: About Two Thirds of the Furniture
Above a sofa or sideboard, the work (or group of works) should span about two thirds of the furniture's width. Narrower and it floats; wider and it crushes.
A 210 cm sofa therefore wants something around 140 cm of total width. That doesn't mean a single 140 cm canvas: three 45 × 30 photographs side by side with a 5 cm gap make 145 cm, and often work better than one large piece — they cost less, too.
3. Light: Watch the Wall for a Day
Before buying, look at where the sun lands in the room at three points in the day. No work on paper goes on a wall that takes direct sun, however lovely that wall is. Direct light bleaches, and no ordinary glass fully prevents it.
The best wall for a work is nearly always the one *opposite* the window: plenty of indirect light, never the beam.
4. Distance: Format Depends on How Far Back You Can Stand
A large format needs room to be seen. The practical rule: minimum viewing distance is roughly 1.5 times the work's diagonal.
In a narrow living room, where the sofa sits two metres from the opposite wall, a 90 × 60 work will never be seen whole: you'll always be too close. There, a 45 × 30 with space around it breathes. This is why "large" and "high-impact" aren't synonyms.
The Mistake That Cancels Every Rule
Which brings us to the wrong question. Choosing the work to match the furniture.
The sofa will change. The walls will get repainted. The rug dictating today's palette will be in storage in six years. A work chosen to match the sofa becomes, when the sofa dies, an object with no reason — and it moves to the hallway, then the basement.
A work chosen because you couldn't stop looking at it survives three house moves. It's the only criterion that holds over time, and also the only one no interiors guide will give you, because it can't be standardised.
The Honest Test
Look at the image and ask: does it hold me even when I'm not in the mood to look at it? Not "do I like it" — you like a hundred things. Does it hold you.
If yes, the four rules above will tell you where to put it. If no, no rule will help.
Where to Start, Concretely
For a first living-room purchase, the sensible band is the one where being wrong doesn't hurt: a signed photograph runs €40 to €100, a unique mixed-media piece €60 to €140. If you want the single work that carries a main wall, large formats run €200 to €280.
And if you don't know where to begin, begin with people rather than formats: the artists are here.