Selecting the Right Art for Your Home
Art is one of the most critical aspects that make up the aesthetics of a home and acts as a window into the homeowner’s personality. It enhances the value of the space and has the power to stimulate interesting conversations. Art is a beautiful way to decorate your home and is a profound way of personal expression.
Selecting the right art pieces for your home takes time, patience, and a keen eye. The following simplified guide can help you start choosing the right art for your home.
3 Easy Ways to Choose Art for Your Home
Examine Available Space:
There are a few basic things to consider when it comes to hanging art on your walls. First, oversized pictures might look jarring if the wall space available is small. It can overwhelm the rest of the decor and distract from the room’s overall aesthetics. For smaller walls, gallery-style artwork that showcases multiple artworks in smaller frames can make the wall look tidy and nicely complement the rest of the decor. In contrast, larger walls beautifully highlight large-scale accent pieces, create an attractive focal point, and do not distract from the overall aesthetics of the space.
Incorporate Existing Art:
Match the overall decor with your existing art pieces. If it’s not a new build, look carefully at your art pieces. It speaks volumes about who you are and what you love and may lie a clue about how to decorate your home. Try pairing complementary styles or mix and match.
Art by Room Type
Thoughtfully chosen art can add character and personality to any space rendering it cohesive and aesthetically pleasing. Here’s a breakdown of the best kind of art to use according to room type.
Bedroom
Your bedroom is a space for rest, relaxation, reflection, and rejuvenation. It’s a quiet, personal space that should soothe your soul after a long day. Choose simple art with soft colors and nothing too jarring for this space. Photographs of beautiful landscapes, fine arts, or floral paintings are excellent choices for bedrooms. If you’re looking to add an organic, tactile element to your bedroom space, add a dreamcatcher or macrame wall tapestries.
Pro tip: Match your bedroom art with the decor and bedding. Add candles, shelves, a plant, and books that complement the artwork and transform your bedroom into a peaceful sanctuary.
Living Room
Living rooms are ideal for gallery walls where you can experiment with all frame sizes. This gathering space is also perfect for hanging oversized pieces to create attractive focal points. Engaging still-life, landscapes, and pieces that can become conversation-starters are excellent choices for living rooms.
Pro tip: Select art that is location appropriate. For example, in Colorado, our Denver studio designs living rooms to incorporate the mountain theme and the beautiful hues of the earth and sky. In Miami, we tend to use modern, more colorful art. Meanwhile, our Montecito studio focuses on designing living rooms with art that are modern accents that complement the gorgeous Spanish architecture of the area.
Kitchen
Kitchens are the most utilitarian spaces in any home and usually the last space where art is considered significant. Yet, a thoughtful piece of art can wonderfully add style and sophistication to the kitchen.
Pro tip: Choose simple pieces that complement your kitchen’s functional aspects, such as cabinets, countertops, and color palette. Vintage oil portraits or interesting still-life photographs are great choices to decorate your kitchen. Lighting is a great way to get the artistic flair without taking up wall space.
BEVERAGE STATION:
Dining Room
The dining room is one of the most prominent spaces in the home where art receives a lot of attention. It is a perfect space to go bold with art that you wouldn’t consider otherwise. The art in the dining room should be thought-provoking and stimulate conversation. It can be anything from a beautiful still life, commissioned, high-end pieces to anything that tells a personal story. It can be a large statement piece or a gallery wall with a collection of works by your favorite artist.
Pro tip: Adding track lights pointing at the artwork is an excellent path to enhancing the viewing experience.
Bathroom
Artwork in the bathroom needs to be soothing, not stimulating. It should calm you down and prepare you for relaxation. Choose artwork that feels organic and soothes the eyes and mind, such as images of forests or any kind of greenery. Nautical-themed art is also a great way to evoke a beachy, water vibe in the bathroom.
Pro tip: Ensure that your bathroom art can withstand moisture. If moisture is an issue, avoid stretched canvases that are not sealed within waterproof frames. Some durable choices for bathroom art are ceramic, glass, and metal pieces.
Home Office
Your home office is a space that should inspire creativity and productivity, and what better way than great art to help you achieve that! Surrounding yourself with beautiful artwork can help you get focused. Inspirational or motivational quotes, black and white images, or art prints in soft colors are excellent choices for home offices. Design your walls to make for an appealing background for video conferences.
Pro tip: Carefully consider if it is your style to add inspirational quotes and motivational art in the webcam’s view, as it could have both a positive and negative impact on video conferences depending on the nature of your work.
Where to Find Art?
Online Resources
Browse through a wide variety of categories to find the art that speaks to you through these websites:
www.saatchiart.com – This is an excellent resource for a lot of beautiful original pieces.
www.artfinder.com – A global company featuring original art by up and coming artists, this website also features stunning photography collections on a broad range of subjects.
www.lumas.com – A well-known website for buying expensive, specialty items.
www.20×200.com – Great resource for reasonably priced limited edition prints.
www.minted.com – A useful source to find limited edition prints in all sizes, including stunning murals.
https://www.ahafineart.com/ – A fantastic resource for urban, street art, graffiti art, with lots of colors. Also great for contemporary, industrial style artwork.
Personal Artwork
As mentioned earlier, look closely at all personal artwork you own, and think about how it may work in your home. Sometimes, a painting in the entryway which seemed irrelevant may work wonders when hung in the dining room with a beautiful wallpaper background! Read this blog to see how our studio’s relocation of the foyer painting to the dining room makes the artwork pop.
Auction Houses
If you are looking for high-end artwork from internationally reputed artists, auction houses like Sotheby’s are an excellent resource. While many auction houses have online platforms, visiting one in person and making a sweet bid on something you love is also exciting! Keep in mind that the value of high-end art only increases with time, so they can be a good investment while also adorning your walls.
Commissioned Artwork
If you have an artistic flair and want to see your creative imagination come alive on canvas, you can commission artists to do the work for you. Keep in mind that this is a creative endeavor involving collaborating with the artists and requires a lot of mutual trust and faith. The art thus created will be personal, intimate, and unique. If you want to commission an artist, you can find them on websites such as this and this. Remember that commissioning art may take a good deal of time depending on the concept, size, and complexity, so patience is key. Always conduct thorough background research of the artists you want to commission and study their works carefully to understand whether their style reflects your tastes.
Other Sources
Don’t be afraid to explore options such as vintage stores, used furniture stores, donation stores like Goodwill, and thrift shops for unique art pieces.
An Artful Home
Art can have a powerful impact on the aesthetics of a home, so make sure you budget for it when you plan your home renovation.
If you are looking for interior design and art curation services, please reach out to us at 720-735-7533. We offer services coast to coast from our design studios in Denver, Miami, and Montecito (Santa Barbara). We can come to your location or work with you remotely with full-service e-design. We would love to support you!
Margarita Bravo
Denver’s Best Interior Designer
Margarita is a luxury interior designer and decorator, remodeler, furniture curator, and creator of experiences. Margarita’s unique skill set has evolved from her strong educational background and European and Latin American sources of inspiration. Now with design studios in Denver, Miami, and Montecito.
Margarita
