Paintings are what’s going to make your home personal and unique. The wrong selection of paintings and artwork can actually put your entire décor style in jeopardy; at the same time, the right one can become the focus of your entire room.
Of course, you can be experimental in your choice of paintings in your own home, stick with your favorites and the ones that bear sentimental value in your life. On the other hand, there are certain rules for hanging paintings, photographs and artwork on your walls. Following the golden rules will make sure that you’ve chosen the right paintings for the right walls in the right rooms, and that will help you to correctly decorate your home.
In this article, you’ll find a complete guide to hanging the proper kind of paintings in each of the rooms in your home, which will definitely help you.
In the Living Room
The plan for living rooms is quite simple! If you have a large couch or sofa, the norm is to place a rather large painting directly above it. Since couches are mainly placed along a wall, the wall behind them is generally used for paintings. The color palette for this painting should be directly connected to the style of your living room: the color should match the color of the couch or should be a complete contrast, i.e. a painting with red strokes if your couch is white, or a yellow-adorned painting when your furniture is brown and wooden.
The living room can also be used for a selection of paintings and frames instead of one large one. It is much better if you stick to a color palette or a theme for the selection, instead of randomly choosing artwork. The frames can be of the same color or random, but there should always be consistency among the ones you choose.
Paintings in your living room should ideally be landscapes, abstracts or random objects; the space behind the couch is not really for your family portraits or your group photographs. If you have another vacant wall adjacent to the couch, that’s where your family photographs should go. You can take up a whole wall or just a portion of it for your photographs, which should ideally be of different sizes and shapes, along with wall hangings, souvenirs, and different artworks.
In the Bedroom
Ideally, bedrooms sound perfect for your family photographs, but experts and psychologists advise against it. According to them, having the photographs of your family and loved ones hanging right in front of you when going to sleep can actually put pressure and expectations on your mind, which isn’t too good for a restful sleep.
Paintings in your bedroom should have a rather restful presence, so it is better to pick something with soothing colors. It also helps the décor of your room if you choose something that reflects the color palette of the room, in a tone of grey, light blue, light green, pink or beige. Both landscapes and abstract artworks in bedrooms, but only if they aren’t too bright. If you want to keep photographs of your family in your bedroom, you can keep some on your nightstand or hang them behind your bed. If you have a relatively small bedroom, you shouldn’t crowd it with too many paintings or photos; just hang one or two paintings that feel peaceful to you.
In the Kitchen
Usually, there’s not enough space in kitchens for anyone to hang any paintings, because all the walls are covered with cabinets and storage units. However, you can still place a few framed artwork and paintings in the kitchen, either on the shelves or by hanging them on any spare wall space.
Every kitchen – particularly the open kitchens – have a few shelves that are placed only for the sake of decoration. Small framed pictures and paintings can go on these shelves, but only if they are not in your way. When choosing artwork for your kitchen, they are generally related to cooking or food: quotes about cooking, funny comics, caricatures or sketch of food, drinks or utensils.
In the Guest Rooms
Guest bedrooms are usually designed in a neutral manner because it will be used by a number of people from different backgrounds and tastes. Just like the bed sheets and furniture chosen for the guest bedroom should appeal to everyone, so should the decoration and the artwork.
It’s better not to hang anything that’s too wild, too bright or too daring in the bedroom meant for your guests; mild-colored landscapes or abstract paintings in neutral colors, or simple black-and-white photographs should go perfectly in your guest bedroom for anyone who will stay there in the future.
In the Study
If you have extra space in your home for a study, a home office or a library, the decorations for these rooms are usually completely different than any other rooms. These rooms are usually dark and lined with wooden panels, and the light sources are usually from lamps and other artificial light sources. Not many people use the study or the home office at the same time; it is certainly not a gathering place for the whole family.
The paintings or the artwork chosen for the study, the home office or the library should reflect the mood of the room. Quotes by famous authors, maps, blueprint, newspaper cutting – these should be hung on your walls. If you work from home, anything related to your particular field of work, or the portrait of the person who inspires you should be hanging from your walls. You can also hang a large whiteboard or a pinboard in your home office, where you can pin anything you need for your work, and change them whenever needed.
In the Kid’s Bedroom
Your children’s bedroom is where you can truly go wild with your imagination. There’s no limit to what you can hang from the walls in the children’s bedroom; you can use every color of the rainbow in a single room or stick to their favorite colors. You can use extremely fun colors such as purple, orange, yellow and pink in these bedrooms, or choose pink for your daughter and blue for your son, as per tradition. Cartoons characters, underwater theme, unicorns and fairies, princesses and robots, stars and moon – the choices for artwork and paintings are endless for kids’ bedrooms.
You can simply go with paintings related to what your kids are interested in, or you can choose a theme you liked as a child. They can be abstract paintings, cartoons or quotes – there’s no limit to the colors you can choose, especially if the room is bright, large and has a lot of natural light coming in.
In the Bathroom
If you have enough space, why not? You can hang almost anything in your bathrooms, from wildlife photography to sketches, funny quotes, cartoons, and even magazine covers. The size of the artwork should be in proportion to the size of the bathroom; don’t hang up something massive in a small bathroom, and vice versa. Frames go better in pairs in the bathroom, so you can choose two similar ones, in duplicate frames.
Above everything, there’s one rule in selecting painting and artwork for your home: buy what you love. Your personal preference is what matters the most in decorating your home, so whatever painting that you end up falling in love with belongs in your home, wherever you want it to hang. So don’t stick to the rules and regulations too much, but try to follow your inner gut feelings when it comes to art.
