Pet portrait size guide

The three sizes at a glance

Canvas	In centimeters	Best for
8 × 10 in	20 × 25 cm	Shelf, desk, bedside
11 × 14 in	28 × 36 cm	Most walls, hallways
16 × 20 in	41 × 51 cm	Above furniture

Every canvas is 1.25 in (about 3 cm) deep, stretched over solid wood bars with a sawtooth hanger on the back, so it stands off the wall like a painting and hangs on a single nail. All three have nearly the same proportions, so your portrait is framed the same way on each.

Letter paper
8.5 × 11 in

8 × 10 in

11 × 14 in

16 × 20 in

8 × 10 in: shelves, desks and small walls

A little smaller than a sheet of letter paper. It is the size for a bookshelf, a desk at work, a bedside table or the narrow strip of wall beside a door. Because the canvas is 1.25 in deep, it stands on a shelf leaning against the wall, with no frame and no easel. It is also the easiest size to give when you do not know the other person’s walls.

11 × 14 in: the one we would pick

Large enough to read from across a room, small enough to find a place in any home. It holds a wall by itself in a hallway, an entry or a home office, and it is the natural size for a gallery wall, where it sits happily among framed photographs. If you are hesitating, this is the answer.

16 × 20 in: above furniture

The statement piece. It wants a wall with nothing else competing: above a mantel, a console table, a chest of drawers or a reading chair. At this size the brushwork, the braid and the look in the eyes all carry across a living room.

How high to hang it

Museums and galleries hang pictures so that the center of the picture sits at eye level, usually about 57 inches (145 cm) from the floor. That works at home too. Measure 57 inches up, mark the wall, and put the middle of the canvas on the mark.

Above furniture, eye level matters less than the gap. Leave about 6 to 8 inches (15 to 20 cm) between the top of the furniture and the bottom of the canvas, so the two read as one arrangement instead of two strangers.

Art above furniture: the two-thirds rule

A picture looks right above a piece of furniture when it is roughly two-thirds as wide. A 16 × 20 in canvas is 16 inches wide, so it suits a table or chest about 24 to 30 inches wide. Above a wide sofa, one portrait of any size will look lost: hang two or three in a row instead.

Pairs and groups

Two pets means two portraits, and two portraits in the same size make a handsome pair. Hang them side by side with 2 to 3 inches between them and treat the pair as one picture when you measure. A General beside a Duchess, or an Admiral beside a Queen, looks like a household that takes itself seriously.

For three, keep the same size and the same gap, and line up the top edges.

And the digital file?

The digital file is the same portrait without the canvas: a JPEG of about 1,850 × 2,300 pixels, a little over 4 megapixels. On paper it prints crisply up to about 11 × 14 in. On canvas, whose weave is kinder to fine detail, it holds up to 16 × 20 in, which is how we print it ourselves.