Let's talk about button placement on shirts

While researching the perfect shirt pattern, I looked at hundred of home made shirts.
While researching for what I liked in a shirt, I looked at dozens shirts in stores.

There's an epidemic. Something serious is happening.

One main reproach toward shirts (from my friends, and people around me), is the gaping in the closure at the bust.

When you look at shirt patterns instructions, the matter of button placement is always quite elusive. "Put 8 buttons, begin at the top, and ending at the bottom, at about 6" from each others", or something like this.

And when you don't have this clever and expensive tool (a Simflex ?), you just have to use your brain. (and we all have one, for free, isn't it great ?)

(look how smug I am, in my wallpaper shirt)

Your shirt is gaping because there should be a button right in front of the bust point.
No need for quantum physics.

I have two solutions. An empirical one, and a lazy and approximate one.

The first one. Put your unfinished shirt on, and close it with pins. When it's comfortable (move a bit in it), go in front of a mirror (or ask for help), and put a pin on the closure on the line between your two bust points.

The second one. On you pattern, or on your unfinished shirt laid flat, put a pin on the closure part at the same height as (/in front of) the point of you bust dart.

Then take you graduated ruler and your calculator, and do the math to place your buttons at equal distance of each other (the important buttons here being the collar and bust ones).

If you prefer nice, clear tutorials, A Fashionable Stitch has a good one. (with a Simflex)