Damage-Free Hanging

Three decisions, in this order, and you will not need a fourth.

1. Hook or strip?

Flat-backed objects that should sit against the wall -- frames, mirrors, panels -- use strips, which publish roughly three times the capacity of a hook because the load acts in shear rather than peel. Anything hanging from a loop, strap or handle needs a hook. The full comparison is in adhesive hooks vs mounting strips.

2. Which rating?

3. Is it coming off cleanly?

Every product here removes by pulling the tab slowly, straight down. On cured paint that takes nothing with it; on fresh paint, wallpaper or a patched area it can. Do adhesive hooks damage walls or paint sets out the four conditions that decide it, and adhesive hooks vs nails and screws is the honest version of the comparison for when the answer is that you need more than 20 lb. The removal itself, step by step and with five recoveries for when it goes wrong, is in how to remove adhesive hooks without taking paint.

Two pages cover the ends of the range. At the heavy end, best damage-free wall hooks for heavy items finds the published ceiling -- 15 lb on a single hook, 20 lb for a strip set -- and says what to do above it. For pictures specifically, best damage-free picture hooks starts from what is on the back of the frame rather than from its weight. And if something has already come off the wall, why command hooks fall off diagnoses it from what the failed strip looks like and names the product that fixes each cause.

Two neighboring problems get solved in other hubs: curtains, where a bracket publishes 20 lb against a hook's 7.5 lb, and bathrooms, where steam defeats indoor adhesive and the water-resistant range exists for a reason.

Two products sit either side of this range. Below it, sticky tack and poster strips: the putties publish 1 lb and 2 lb where they publish anything at all, and they are rated for brick and cinderblock, which the adhesive line is not. Outside the house, outdoor adhesive hooks publish 2 lb to 5 lb and a -20F to 125F service range -- along with a separate 50F to 105F range for actually applying them.

And at the opposite end of the category from damage-free, best heavy-duty mounting tape covers the products that publish 30 and 45 lb and bond to brick -- including the one maker that publishes a rate rather than a total, and the removal problem that makes tape a narrow recommendation in a rental.

The lightest job in the range gets its own page: best cable management ranks cord clips, raceway and boxes on published fit -- the six channel profiles one maker prints, the 10.5 in power strip a box actually takes, and the split that matters in a rental between the adhesives that publish a clean-removal method and the raceway that publishes none.

When the job is bigger than any published figure

Three specific jobs come up often enough to have their own pages, and all three are decided by a number rather than a technique. Mounting a TV without drilling is the one with the clearest answer: no adhesive product on this site publishes a figure within sight of a television's 35 to 65 lb, so the page ranks floor stands that publish 77 to 110 lb instead. Broom and mop holders turns on two figures almost nobody checks -- the 0.7 to 1.0 in handle window a gripper publishes, and the maker who prints 30 lb screwed against 8 lb on its own adhesive. And wreath hangers is really a door question: over the door at 20 to 22 lb, magnetic at 5 to 10 lb on steel and nothing at all on wood, or adhesive at 5 lb.