How to Hang Your Vinyl Record Covers for Display

Jaden Urban, who has been collecting vinyl for over six years, explains how to use your vinyl record covers as decorations for your home, to create a unique design, and to showcase your vinyl collection.

Here’s my vinyl collection that I display on my wall in my room, which gives music fans, like myself, a way to show off our vinyl collection. Prices range from $20-$40 for retail. Later, some can be resold for hundreds if not thousands of dollars. Photo by Jaden Urban.

Supplies needed

Vinyl collectors rejoice! Have you ever wondered if there’s something cool you could do with all those records you have stored? Well look no further, there’s a way to still protect and play your records, and to still use them as an enhancement to your wall. Hanging your records on the wall is a very safe and effective method to celebrate your favorite musicians and favorite albums.

Supplies needed to hang one cover, if you want to do more add accordingly:

• Vinyl Cover
• 2 A1 Command Hooks; can be purchased here
• Pencil
• Ruler or measuring tape

Supplies that are used for safely hanging your vinyl covers on the wall with no damage to the vinyl or the wall. Photo by Jaden Urban.

To hang your vinyl, you will want to remove the records from their respective cases and store them in a safe place where they won’t get scratched, damaged, or dusty. I put my records in a crate from Crosley, which can be purchased here.

It’s important to store your vinyl records after hanging the covers to ensure they don’t get damaged and allow ease of access to still play them. Photo by Jaden Urban.

First Steps

For today’s demonstration, I’ll be using A$AP Rocky’s second major-label album, “At. Long. Last. A$AP”, which is a crazy experience of musicality. If you haven’t listened to it, I would highly recommend it, after reading this article of course.

Now, these first steps will kind of differ, depending on how you want to organize your records on the wall. Whether you want to fill your entire wall or hang them in the middle with a 4x4 design. This will involve you doing some pre-placed measurements of where you would like to hang them, which you can do by simply holding your cover on the wall, and marking where the bottom left corner of your vinyl will sit on the wall.

For today, I’ll be hanging mine using the wall as a reference. If this is what you want to do as well, I suggest hanging your vinyl record one inch away from the wall, but ultimately it is your preference.

One inch away from the wall is a good reference point for me when hanging vinyl records on my wall as I like to cover the entire wall with records. Photo by Jaden Urban.

Once you have established where you want to hang your record, I’ll reiterate this again: hold the cover on the wall, very perpendicular and straight, and under the bottom left corner mark a little circle or line with your pencil.

Holding the record against the wall allows you to better measure and hang your cover more neatly. Photo by Jaden Urban.

Placing First Hook

So, for the next step, you’ll want to grab your ruler or tape measurer. Place your measuring device at the point where you marked where the bottom left corner of your vinyl would be and make another mark at 3 ¼ inches from that point. That is where your first hook will be placed.

3 ¼ is a measurement that I think works best for the placement of the first hook. Photo by Jaden Urban.

Once you have made your mark, you’re almost ready to put your first hook on. The only thing to note is how to stick the hook on the wall. You do not want to place the bottom of the plastic piece where you made your mark. You want to make sure the mark matches where the bottom of the hook is, where your vinyl cover will sit.

Here’s a video below that better explains it:

This video explains how to correctly stick your A1 Command Hook on the wall. Video by Jaden Urban.

From here you are ready to stick your hook on the wall. First, you’ll peel off the blue side of the strip and stick your hook to the strip. Next, you’ll remove the black side of the strip, and then you’ll stick it to the wall.

You have officially placed your first hook! Photo by Jaden Urban.

Final Steps

We are onto the second hook. This hook will be placed in the upper right section of the cover. Now for this portion, it’s not too particular on where exactly you place the hook in regardless of the vertical direction of the record, just make sure it’s not too close to the middle of the right side of the record or too close to the upper right corner.

For hanging this second hook, I recommend placing your vinyl cover in the bottom hook you’ve already placed on the wall. Then, grab the second hook and place it where you want the record to be held and mark with your pencil where you want the second hook to be placed, to allow for a more organized and better-measured look.

Here’s a video for a better explanation:

This video explains how to precisely set your second hook. Video by Jaden Urban.

After you have made the mark, place the strip on your hook and place it on the wall, just like you did with the first one.

Placing the second hook helps keep the cover upright and prevents it from falling over. Photo by Jaden Urban.

After you have stuck the hook on the wall, you can now place your vinyl cover in the hooks.

The completed project is finally here, and the vinyl is officially hung up! Photo by Jaden Urban.

Unlimited Options

Now that you have hung up your first cover, the options are endless for what you can do next. Ultimately, you can just leave the one up or you can do several different designs. For me, I covered up my entire wall of them, so if you want to do that as well, I would follow the same steps except I would just place each record, both up-and-down and side-by-side, ½ to 1 inch away from each other. However, the choice is yours on how you want to design your wall. Here’s hoping my one domino can help knock down what cool designs you have planned.

Explainer Journalism by Jaden Urban for the Reynolds Sandbox