Lean it
The simplest thing you can do with a framed print is not hang it at all. A wide shelf, a mantel or the top of a low bookcase will hold a frame leaning back against the wall, and nothing is committed: you can move it in a second, swap it seasonally, or stand a second frame in front of it and let them overlap.
Leaning also solves the problem of a wall you are not allowed to drill.
Hang it low
The received advice is to center a picture at eye level, which in practice means somewhere around 145cm. That is right in a hallway you walk past and wrong above a sofa you sit on. Hang to the furniture, not to the room: about 20cm of wall between the top of the sofa back and the bottom of the frame reads as one composition rather than two objects.
Use the narrow wall
The strip of wall between a door and a corner, the return beside a window, the panel at the end of a landing — these are the pieces of a room nobody plans for, and a single tall print turns them from an awkward gap into something deliberate.
Make a pair, not a grid
Two prints of the same size, hung with a hand’s width between them, do most of what a gallery wall does and take a tenth of the decisions. If you want a third, put it somewhere else in the room rather than in the line.
Put it where you will actually look at it
The best-lit wall in the house is often the one facing the window, which is also the one that will fade a print fastest. Between the two, choose the wall you pass every day and glaze the frame with something UV-filtering. A print you see is worth more than a print you preserve.
