Best fasteners for french cleat wall
If you are screwing to every stud and they are spaced at 16&quot; and you're not hanging anything incredibly heavy and not climbing, doing chin-ups or doing anything else involving supporting people or repeatedly pulling on the cleats, ONE 2.5&quot; screw per stud is plenty. I expect the weak point will be the top edge of the plywood where you shape it to hang the fixtures. If that's the case, multiple screws per stud or lag bolts will add nothing. Wouldn't be a bad idea to do a regression test on one piece attached to 3 studs. Just pile on weight slowly til something breaks, then you'll know what not do do but you may find that no reasonable amount of weight will break anything if you take reasonable steps like hanging larger shelves from two places as in this photo.