I'm building some structures with figures besides then. According to Shep Paine's "Diorama Book," Shep cautions about making the buildings too tall since they'll dominate the scene.

As a general rule, should the builds not exceed what: Twice the height of a figure? Three times the height? So far I have it about 2.5 times the height of the figure. Is that too tall?

This depends entirely on the building that you are depicting Peter. Different buildings have different height ratios. Older houses were much higher than modern houses for example, but conversely the doors in older houses are lower than in new houses. Another consideration is the geographical location of the building. Mediteranian building are differently proportined than North Western European buildings.

More detail about your building, like location, purpose, age, would be helpful.

Cheers
Henk

I am sure that a tall building won't take away from a dio if it is properly used. I recall seeing a dio with a very tall section of a cathedral on a smallish base and it looked excellent.

I'm thinking about building a vignette with D-Day Rangers looking up a 50m tall section of Pointe du Hoc cliff (56" tall in 1/35). Apparently some of them had to climb 100m cliffs, but my basement is less than 8' tall.

I think there is one main rule :

"the scene has to please the eye of the observer"
Make a mockup of what you intend to build and see if it looks good.

This sounds simple but i think it should not be more complicated.

Cheers
Claude

No tall is too tall, the trick is that the base/scene shouldn't be neither too big nor too small considering the exact thing you want to show.
For instance if you want to do -say Gebirgsjägern climbing some Carpathian mountains (...), you would have to make a pretty tall diorama if you want to show a few guys following each others. But what wouldn't work would be if you showed too much mountain on each side, top and bottom .
Anyway, like says Claude, "the scene has to please the eye of the observer"
JB

I think it depends on the entire project. As JBA included the base and the buildings.
One trick is to put the diorama in front of a mirror and look at it in the mirror. This gives you a totally different perspective and distance to view it. This can help give you a better idea of the impression it will make on viewers.
You also need to consider the horizontal base size.

Here is one that is TAAALLL but balanced



Here is one that has a building that is 3 stories tall and the size of the base balances it out.

Thanks for the replies. The photos definitely help. I guess I should snap some photos and post for feedback. I'm debating whether to use 1/24 figures or a single 150mm one.