Hanging photographs in your home is a great way to personalize the space. But if you have an iron-clad lease around your rental home or apartment, the potential loss of your deposit might make you think twice about making the space your own. There's a good reason for that concern. Even the most conscientious inhabitants can damage the walls and risk their good record. Here are three problems to watch out for with traditional art and photo hanging procedures:

A single point of contact puts too much pressure on the walls.

Drywall isn't a sturdy substance. It can muffle noise and helps break up a space, but it's not strong enough to support much weight or tension. Frames that hang from a central point put the aggregate weight of the frame, enclosed artwork, and the hanging support itself on one narrow point. Over time, the hole will start to widen. That also makes the nail or screw increasingly loose, and it can tear through more of the wall when it eventually comes loose.

Frames with two points of contact will require a lot of adjustments.

Frames with a nail or a hook at each of the top two corners help divide the weight so each point only has to control half of the total. But it can be next to impossible to get the display fully level. That means you're going to be repositioning the hooks over and over again, and leaving multiple holes in the wall can make picky property managers respond poorly. 

Sticky tools leave residue and can't be reused.

If you forego nails and screws entirely, you might turn to sticky patches. These won't poke holes in the wall, but they often leave brightly colored residue. If you have textured walls, they also won't stick correctly and your art can fall down. If you need to re-level a photograph or part of a larger display, most of these products won't restick to the wall, so you're buying new supports every time you make a change.

Instead of damaging your walls or buying one-use-only tools, go to Systematic Art for supports and display tools that will work just right over and over again.