What size print above a sofa

This is the question I get asked most, and the one people most often get wrong — almost always in the same direction. The print they choose is too small.

The rule

A single print above a sofa should be somewhere between two thirds and three quarters of the sofa's width. That is the whole rule. Everything else is refinement.

A standard three-seat sofa is about 210 cm wide. Two thirds of that is 140 cm. Which means the honest answer for most sofas is that a single print is not the answer — you want the largest size, or a pair, or a group.

Against the four sizes I print

Size	Works above	Realistically
20×30 cm	nothing	A shelf, a desk, a narrow wall, or in a group of several
30×46 cm	a small bench	Hallways, beside a door, stacked in pairs
41×61 cm	a two-seat sofa, just	The smallest I would hang alone over furniture
61×91 cm	a two-seat sofa, comfortably	The largest I make, and the best single answer for a three-seat sofa — though a pair beats it

Every size above is the image, not the finished frame. A box frame adds a border on all four sides, so a framed print covers noticeably more wall than its stated size. If you are working to the centimetre, do the paper test below and allow for that border rather than measuring the print size alone.

Height

The centre of the print sits at eye level — about 145 cm from the floor — except above furniture, where the rule that matters is the gap. Leave 15 to 25 cm between the top of the sofa back and the bottom of the frame. Less and it looks crowded. More and the print stops belonging to the sofa and starts floating on its own.

Groups

Two prints of the same size, hung with 5–8 cm between them, read as one object and cover far more wall than either does alone. A pair hung side by side covers a little over twice the width of one print once you allow for the gap, which suits a two-seat sofa better than any single print I make.

Three works too, but three wants to be either identical in size or deliberately unequal. Three nearly-equal prints look like an accident.

Check before you buy

Cut newspaper or paper to the exact size, including the frame allowance, and tape it to the wall. Leave it a day. This takes five minutes and is more reliable than any visualisation, including any I could build — you are testing it in your own light, at your own eye height, from the chair you actually sit in.

Nearly everyone who does this goes up a size.

One thing that changes the answer

Viewing distance. A print seen from two metres can be smaller than one seen from four. Sofas are usually viewed from across the room, which is another reason the large size wins more often than people expect.

Browse the prints, or read about paper, sizes and framing.