The Challenge of Choosing Art for a House with Large Walls
My husband and I moved from a tiny attic flat to our current house, which is a large Victorian maisonette. Not only did our furniture look like it had come from a dolls house in our huge new rooms, but the pieces of art which we already owned looked like postcards on the much bigger wall space available. We had to learn how to choose and hang pieces of art which suited the high ceilings and large walls of our new house. Today I'm going to share with you 4 different approaches to selecting and hanging artwork for a large house.
The first option is to find a large piece of art that you like that can serve as a centerpiece for your room. You may wish to choose a piece of art that ties in with the existing interior decoration of the room. Alternatively, you may want to select a piece of art and select paint and decor to tie in with that piece of art. This Train Tracks statement print, for example, is a very strong, dramatic design, and at 70cm by 100cm, is of a large scale. The selection of this piece of art influenced the decision to paint the walls of the stairwell a light grey; ash grey stair rails; and paint the treads of the stairs a deep grey. The Train Tracks statement print itself has been very simply framed in a light cream white.
Another option is to paint your wall space a very rich color. You can then break up this expanse of strong colour with a large piece of art which has a lot of negative space. This Victorian vestibule, for example, has been painted a deep shade of red. The Summer Swallows on a Telephone Wire statement print has a lot of white negative space. This reduces the intensity of the red walls. The red paint reflects the red markings of the swallows so that the interior looks harmonious. This is a bold, effective way of decorating a large wall.
Another alternative is to place a mount around a piece of artwork. If you have a medium sized piece of art, this will increase the size of the art as well, scaling it up to better suit a large scale setting. A mount will increase the size of your artwork by 10 to 15 centimetres all the way round. A mount will also help to draw attention to your piece of art. If you place a piece of art in a mount, it gives it some breathing space. Mounting artwork is especially important if you have a room decorated with a bold design of wallpaper. You can see all of this come into play in the Canadian Geese Statement Print, in a white mount, simply framed and displayed on corresponding grey birch wallpaper.
Finally, if you have a large area of wall space, you can fill it with a number of pieces of art which tie in together. You can see here that this kitchen wall has been decorated with 4 hen prints from the same series. The red frames tie in with the red printed hens, and help to fill the wall space. The red kitchenware reflects the red of the hens, and accessorises the kitchen very effectively. Hanging a group of smaller pieces of art together is a really good compromise if you are a bit worried about committing to a larger piece of art.
What about you? Have you had the experience of moving to a new house which is a different scale to the previous one - requiring a different approach to selecting and hanging artwork?