How big is 18x24 on a wall?

How big 18x24 really looks

It is the most common medium poster size, used for art posters, exhibition prints and maps. Its long side, 61 cm (24 in), is about the length of an arm from shoulder to fingertip, and 30 % of the height of a standard interior door. In area it covers 0.28 m², about 4.6 sheets of US letter paper.

Where an 18x24 print fits

It suits a living room wall on its own, a hallway, a bedroom and the wall above a console or a dresser. A pair fills the wall above a sofa.

• In portrait, an 18 × 24 print is 46 cm (18 in) wide, so on its own it suits furniture 61 to 69 cm wide, or a narrow stretch of wall.
• In landscape, an 18 × 24 print is 61 cm (24 in) wide, so on its own it suits furniture 81 to 91 cm wide, such as a narrow chest of drawers.
• Above a three-seat sofa 220 cm wide, 3 portrait prints in a row, 6 cm apart, fill the two thirds of the sofa’s width that looks right.

How high to hang it

On a bare wall, hang an 18 × 24 print with its centre 145 to 152 cm (57 to 60 in) from the floor, the eye level galleries use. Above a sofa 85 cm high, keep 15 to 25 cm between the sofa and the frame, which puts the centre of a landscape 18 × 24 at about 148 cm (58 in). An 18 × 24 is the largest size that still works on a narrow wall, so it is a safe pick when you do not know the buyer’s room.

Framing an 18x24 print

An 18 × 24 print fits a ready-made 18 × 24 poster frame, or a 24 × 30 inch frame with a 3 inch mat.

18x24 compared with the sizes around it

One step down, 16 × 20 is 40.6 × 50.8 cm, and 18 × 24 has 1.4 times its area. One step up, 24 × 36 is 61 × 91.4 cm, with about twice the area of 18 × 24. The dashed outlines in the drawing show both at the same scale. The nearest size in the ISO A series is A2, at 42 × 59.4 cm, about 12 % smaller in area. See A2 on a wall.

The file a sharp 18x24 print needs

Print shops ask for 300 dpi, which at 18 × 24 means 5,400 × 7,200 pixels. From the viewing distance above, 150 dpi (2,700 × 3,600 pixels) already looks clean, which is enough for most photographs and digital art.

Selling 18x24 prints online?

70 % of people who have never bought art online fear it will look different at home. Roomhero puts every work in your shop on your buyers’ own walls at its real size, in every size and frame you sell, straight from your product page and with no app. Every pixel of your artwork stays untouched. Plans start at €29 a month for up to 250 artworks, set up for you in 2 working days, with five-star support. Try it free with one artwork.