How to Choose the Right Living Room Wall Decor
Once you’ve chosen your color scheme, picked out your furniture, and decided on your drapes, the next step in achieving your dream living room is to consider the wall décor. While there are no right or wrong choices when it comes to selecting the kind of artworks or decorative pieces with which to adorn your walls, mistakes can be made, nonetheless. To keep you on the right track, we’ve put together some top tricks and tips to help you choose the right wall decor for your living room.
Make it Personal
Sure, there’s no end of hints and tips to help guide you, but wall art and decor is the ultimate expression of your personality and personal taste… yours and no one else’s. It’s one thing to look for inspiration on Pinterest, it’s another thing entirely to blindly recreate someone else’s vision wholesale. If you favor a minimalist approach, then go with your gut and choose something simple and clean. If you prefer a fun, vibrant ambiance, go for something big, bold, and cheerful. If you’re in love with the past, a collection of sepia-tinted photographs can do the dual job of looking amazing and reflecting your personality at the same time. If you’re a fun-loving free spirit, look for something with heaps of positive energy and humor. There are no hard and fast rules: let your instincts and your gut guide you, and you’ll end up with something that’s wholly and uniquely yours.
Think About The Theme
As Gifu recommends, before you even consider taking your wallet out and investing in some art pieces, consider the general theme you’re aiming for. Would you prefer one large piece to take front and center stage, or would you rather spread the focus over several key pieces? Is there one type of style you prefer, or would you rather showcase your eclectic tastes with a range of different options? Will a period painting work best with your living room’s theme, or would a collection of contemporary images work best? Look at your living space objectively and try to envision it once your final painting has been hung- is the end result what you’re aiming for, or is there an extra consideration or adjustment you need to make to pull things together?
Build Around Existing Pieces
If you don’t have a single piece of existing art you want to incorporate into your living room wall décor, then skip on. If not, then it’s time to take that piece out and take a good hard look at it. What is it about it that puts a smile on your face? Is it the style, the colors, or maybe just the feelings it evokes? Whatever it is, use that feature as your inspiration and guide in selecting new pieces to build around it. Remember, however, that some styles are more compatible than others. While you by no means have to go far a “matchy-matchy” look (in fact, it’s fair to say that unless you’re extremely careful, it’s best you don’t even try) it’s important to look for pieces that won’t overwhelm each other, or detract from each other’s merits. For example, if your current art piece is a traditional landscape in oils, surrounding it with a collection of African masks is going to do little to bring out the best in either the masks or the oil painting.
Take It To The Max
Just as a big collection of paintings can look stunning, so too can a single piece… providing it’s the right piece for your living room and is hung in such a way as to be effective. A large piece of wall art can quickly become an incredible focal point when hung in an area that naturally draws the eye (above a centrally placed fireplace or on the wall directly opposite the main doorway, for example). Leave all other walls bare to really allow the piece to shine.
Shine A Little light
Not all wall decorations have to go the artistic route. If your room is on the small side, or if its north-facing and lacks natural daylight, enhance what little space and light there is with the strategic use of mirrors and wall lights. A large mirror hung in the right place can effectively give the impression of a space twice its size, while sculptured lights can cast a beautiful glow over poorly lit corners.
Scale It Up… Or Down
Keep in mind the size of your room when it comes to choosing the most appropriate piece of decoration. As ArtZolo notes. just like a dress can look beautiful on the rack but unflattering if it’s the wrong fit, so too can the size of a room make or break a great piece of art A large room will overwhelm small pieces (unless they’re sufficient in number and grouped closely enough together to give the illusion of covering a much larger space). A large piece, meanwhile, will dwarf a room that veers towards the petite side. Before you finalize your choice of decorations, really consider how they’ll fit into your living space… even the most beautiful piece can lose its appeal if it’s scaled to fit an altogether different room to the one you have.
Frame It To Perfection
Just as important as the art itself is its frame. The options are almost limitless, with some of the most popular frames coming in gold, wood, or metal. Styles, meanwhile, can veer between the highly ornate and the sleekly minimalist. When selecting a frame, think about both the style and colors of the piece, as well as the overall design of your living room. A luxuriously ornate gold frame could look staggeringly out of place in a chic, minimalist setting, but spectacular in a room dripping with glamour. Similarly, a simple metal frame is the entirely wrong choice for a large piece of fine art but could be the ideal setting for a contemporary abstract.
