How to hang art prints in your home: a room-by-room guide to contemporary NZ art

The difference between a home that feels considered and one that feels assembled is often a single strong artwork. Not a grid of small prints filling a wall, not a cluster of decorative objects, but one work, or a few works, that create genuine visual gravity in the rooms they inhabit.

This is a practical guide to hanging contemporary New Zealand art prints well, room by room, with specific size recommendations drawn from experience making and placing screenprints in residential spaces across Aotearoa.

Living rooms: scale first, everything else second

For a living room, the most common (and most fixable) mistake is hanging work that's too small for the wall.

For a standard living room wall, a print should be a minimum of 700mm x 900mm to hold visual presence. Above a sofa or on a feature wall, works of 1000mm x 690mm and larger are worth considering. A print that looks substantial in a studio or a gallery will often shrink dramatically on a residential wall, so scale up before you commit.

The living room is also the space where narrative and layered screenprints earn their keep. It's a social room: people spend extended time here, conversations happen, guests notice things. Work with visual depth and interpretive richness rewards the space in a way that purely decorative art doesn't. A bold screenprint with layered imagery creates a focal point that generates discussion and reveals new details over time.

Sam Leitch's screenprints are produced at significant scale specifically for residential walls. Birdsong II at 1000 x 690mm and the Devotion series at 960 x 1250mm are designed to command a living room wall rather than disappear into it.

Studies and home offices: atmosphere over conversation

A study or home office asks something different of the art on its walls. The work here doesn't need to generate conversation; it needs to create atmosphere. A single strong print above a desk or on a facing wall, something with visual complexity you can return to during moments of pause or thinking, is what suits this space.

Graphic screenprints with confident compositional structure work particularly well in studies. Their clarity of form is energising rather than demanding. The narrative depth is there when you want it, not insistent when you don't. My 1950s. Cool and Tres Amigos are examples of this register: bold enough to anchor a room, resolved enough not to compete with focused work.

Featuring: Tres Amigos l - Screen Print - Limited Edition Screen Print 

Hallways and entrance spaces: the print that sets the tone

A hallway print is a statement of intent. It's the first work a visitor sees, and the one that frames everything that follows. It doesn't need to be your most complex or expensive piece, but it needs presence: strong form, confident colour, and enough visual interest to reward a moment's attention from someone moving past.

For narrow hallways, portrait-format or vertically oriented works are the practical choice. Interior designers typically recommend hanging art so the centre sits at 145-150cm from the floor, roughly eye level for the average adult, and this holds especially in hallways where works are read in passing rather than at rest.

For entrance halls with more space, a single large-format print makes the right kind of arrival statement.

Bedrooms: emotional weight without visual noise

Bedroom art occupies a quieter register. The space benefits from work with emotional depth and visual calm: something you can look at last thing at night and first thing in the morning without it demanding anything from you.

This doesn't mean simple or decorative. It means work where the complexity is felt rather than agitated. Prints with subtle tonal relationships and quieter colour palettes generally work better in bedrooms than bold multi-colour works. Sweet Food Cold Drinks, Tres Amigos I and II and artworks from the Devotion series offer that quieter register at accessible price points. Works with real presence that don't raise the temperature of the room.

Dining rooms: art at table height

The dining room is an underused space for art. A strong print hung at eye height when seated, typically 10-15cm lower than standard hanging height, creates an intimate relationship between the work and the people at the table.

Bold colour and confident graphic form work well in dining rooms. The print needs to hold its own against the visual activity of a room in use: candlelight, movement, the presence of people. A print that works quietly in a study will work harder here.

 

Frequently asked questions

How big should a print be above a sofa? For a standard sofa (around 2m wide), aim for a print that's at least two thirds of the sofa's width, so roughly 130-150cm wide, or a grouping that achieves that span. A single work of 1000mm x 690mm or larger is a strong anchor above most sofas.

At what height should art be hung? Interior designers use a centre-height of 145-150cm as a reliable standard. This places the visual midpoint of the work at eye level for a standing adult. In dining rooms, drop this by 10-15cm so the work reads well from a seated position.

Can screenprints work alongside other types of art? Yes. Limited edition screenprints mix well with original paintings, photography, and giclee prints. The key is scale and tonal relationship, not medium matching. Works that share a colour family or a compositional weight will sit comfortably together regardless of how they were made.

What's the difference between a screenprint and a giclee print? A screenprint (or silkscreen print) is made by pushing ink through a mesh screen. Each colour is a separate pass, and the ink sits on the surface of the paper with a tactile quality. A giclee is a high-resolution inkjet print. Both can be produced as limited edition fine art prints, signed and numbered by the artist.

How do I start collecting contemporary NZ art prints? Start with one room and one wall. Choose a work at a scale appropriate to the space (see the size guidance above), hang it at the right height, and live with it before expanding. Collecting within a single artist's practice is an easy way to build coherence as the collection grows.

 

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Sam Leitch is a New Zealand screenprint artist making limited edition fine art prints for collectors and residential spaces. All prints are signed, numbered, and produced in small editions. View the full collection ->