Why I Always Use Tape to Hang Frames

I’ve lived in my rental apartment for three years, and a few months ago, I finally received my landlord’s permission to decorate.

The first project I decided to take on to make my space feel more personal was to start building a gallery wall filled with artwork, photographs, and mementos from my time traveling and living in Australia and Europe.

Although I do have the blessing to start putting nails in the wall, I still want to be careful and cause as little damage as possible with my display—especially because there will be so many different types of pieces going up on the wall.

If I can place each frame perfectly on the first try, my security deposit will look much healthier when we decide to move out and buy a home. During my daily scroll, I came across this genius hack by creator Leyla (@livingwithley), who used painter’s tape and a level to nail (pun intended) where she was hammering into her wall every time.

I gave this TikTok home trick a try with a framed poster of Budapest that had been resting against my wall for months, and these were the results.

Gathering the Materials

This hack isn’t just meant to be simple—it can also be done with tools and materials you likely already have at home in your toolbox or art drawer.

All you need to grab is a pen, a pencil, a nail, a hammer, a level, and some painter’s tape (I opted for a pretty pastel purple).

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Making My Measurements

Next, I placed my poster frame on the floor face down and placed painter’s tape just below where a nail would sit on the hook. My frame had one hook with five different notches, so I used my pen to ensure I had the middle notch marked for a straight and centered final look.

Leveling and Marking

Time for the fun part: I transferred my painter’s tape from the frame to the top of my level. Once everything was all balanced, I used a pencil to draw a dot on the wall, guided by the mark on the tape.

Before I knew it, all that was left to do was hang up the picture.

The Final Result

Stepping back, I was excited to see that my poster was, in fact, parallel to the wall above and the radiator below. In just a few minutes, I was able to transform our home office corner and add a personalized reminder of when and where my husband and I met.

I cannot wait to build out the rest of our gallery wall around this poster and will be using this hack for every single frame, mirror, and memento that gets added to the wall above our desk.

The Verdict

As someone who works in social media and spends a good portion of the day scrolling, I see hundreds of home hacks every week. I am so glad TikTok influenced me into trying this one, because it was super-fast, and simple.

My poster was on the wall in its evenly placed frame in less than five minutes, and compared to the first couple of pictures we spent hours putting up in the apartment, the process was an absolute breeze.

This poster in particular was placed vertically and using a frame with only one hook, but based on the original video and how well this hack went for me, I could see it working incredibly well on landscape photos and larger pieces of artwork.

I had been putting off starting the gallery wall of my dreams for months, dreading the thought of measuring, marking, and potentially still causing excessive wall damage with the number of nails used.

Now, thanks to this game-changing hack, decorating our living room wall now feels more like the ideal cozy, relaxed activity for a rainy afternoon inside.