Odd vs. Even? What about hybrid odd and and even numbers of rows?
Creating a successful wall often comes down to calculations based on how many pieces are available to hang in a single area, the size of each, and their scale (relative size) compared to the total wall area. In addition it’s important to consider furnishings, light fixtures and any other wall features to determine the height and width that works best for the arrangement.
An advertising copywriter framed 15 Gourmet magazine covers [above] and hung them on her vibrant orange dining room wall – helping to balance a china cupboard at one end. The five rows of three – odd/odd show the conventional approach. The refinements here include the white border on each print that echoes the cabinet doors and lining up all the rows perfectly with the top of the cupboard.
In a California dining room, naturalism is expressed with three pairs of botanical watercolors from Rose Tarlow Melrose House hung on woodgrain Nobilis wallpaper by designers Richard Hallberg and Barbara Wiseley. The pictures break up the neutral tone of the wall and create a focal point in the center of the console table as well as sparking the leaf-green accent color.
Architect James Biber’s white living room has an odd-even arrangement of colorful collages that carries an entire wall and fills in visual space over the white sofa. “Once you have a grid, everything works,” Biber is quoted as saying.
Elsewhere in the California house, smaller botanical prints are hung in even numbered pairs on one corner wall over a sofa — with no difference (at least not to me) in the effectiveness of the set up .
