Living Room Wall Art (10 Easy Ideas)
I have recently been in a discussion with a group of people talking about living room wall art. Most of the people were highlighting the proper ways to display wall art in living rooms. The proper ways according to following appropriate interior design rules.
I don’t like rules…
There are many inspiring ways to display wall art in living rooms, bedrooms, dining rooms, hallways and almost any other wall space in your home. In this article, I am showing a few styles to create unique living room wall art to suit your needs.
Choosing abstract wall art can be quite a challenge for many people. I have written a couple of articles about this subject, Best Abstract Painting For a Living Room and 7 Tips To Successfully Choose Your Abstract Wall Art. I hope you will find them helpful.
You might be surprised to learn that abstract paintings are among the best 5 selling wall art paintings. This may trigger the question of why abstract art is so popular.
However, this article is slightly different. We will look at other inspiring ways to display wall art in living rooms.
There are many ways you could arrange your living room wall art paintings, pictures or family photos from a single artwork to a collection of paintings or photos.
Interior Designer Styles
Every interior designer aims to maximise establishing a harmonious style that creates a comfortable and happy feeling inside your home. It is a delicate balance to create this feeling as you would need to consider so many elements to achieve this goal. Wall colour, furniture, available space and so on. Not a simple task for the untrained eyes.
One of the many elements interior designers take into consideration is wall art and colour psychology. This is by far one of the main considerations of a balanced and harmonious interior design objective.
(I have written another article, Exploring the Power of Colour in Abstract Art, which explains in more detail the importance of colour in abstract art).
The challenge could be harder if you have limited space.
My interior design knowledge is average but I try regularly to think of different ways to arrange my abstract paintings in our living room, dining room, bedrooms and almost any other available wall space we have in our house.
So many other considerations you would need to think about, such as wall space and its colour and all other furniture in the room. Style, colour and theme are among the main points to keep in your mind when considering a living room wall art style. But you don’t have to go over the top thinking and planning. In many cases, it’s a matter of trial and error. If it works, it’s a bonus and if it doesn’t, try again.
Another thing that I enjoy doing is painting large abstract paintings. I like to paint on walls, our walls. For example, I painted a large abstract painting on one of the walls in our dining room measuring 3 W x 2.5 H metres (9.8 x 8.2 ft). It’s a show-stopper, well at least I think.
It isn’t something that many people like to do at home, but if I don’t like the finished painting I would re-paint the wall and start again. It’s that simple.
On the opposite wall is where we have the fireplace wall. Several years ago, my wife wanted to change the wallpaper but couldn’t find something she liked. Wallpapering is one of those jobs that I really don’t enjoy doing. I have no problem painting the whole house, which I usually do every 3-4 years.
So, in an attempt to avoid wallpapering the fireplace wall, I sat down with my large sketchbook and painted a minimalist abstract painting. Using a sponge, I created the entire painting using the dabbing technique. Light grey made up the background colour. For the foreground, I used a few touches of light pink, light blue and light ochre.
I was hoping to be able to persuade my wife to paint over the existing textured wallpaper, rather than put a new one. The plan was a success. She LOVED it. Here is a photo of the painted wallpaper.
Now, back to the subject of our article.
Living Space
Most of us, particularly in Europe, live in somewhat small houses. For example, in the UK most standard living room areas probably measure something around 3.5 x 4.5 metres (11.5 x 14.7 ft.) approximately. Including furniture and other decorative items, the available wall spaces would obviously become more limited.
However, you could still manage to arrange your paintings or pictures in a variety of styles to add a special personal statement and create that comfortable feeling the way you want.
There is a lot of information about interior design and ways to decorate your wall art and the importance of wall art in interior design. However, most of the information and images I came across demonstrated wall art in large rooms and large houses.
In this article, I wanted to show living room wall art in a small house with limited wall space. So, all the following images are of my original abstract paintings arranged in our living room. The wall measures 3.6 W x 2.5 H metres (11.8 x 8.2 ft). The TV is almost in the corner of the wall and there are few flour cushions. The wall is painted light grey and I’m planning to paint it white later this summer.
Living Room Wall Art Ideas
Here are 10 inspiring ways to display wall art in your living room:
# 1. A single large painting
In this style, a single painting is occupying almost 2/3 of the wall space. It makes such an impact with its own statement. A single large painting may not require any additional wall enhancement, as you can see from this image.
As if it’s saying “I’m here and I don’t need any other support. This is my space”. Many views would argue that wall art paintings should always be hung in the centre of the wall space and should not take more than 60% – 75% of the available wall space.
In my art world, I don’t follow rules.
# 2. The Rule of Three
Continuing with the vertical theme, here I have displayed three large vertical paintings of equal length but different widths. This particular style works really well with abstract paintings sharing a similar theme.
I don’t create ‘realism’ paintings anymore, but I’m sure the same style could also work well with some other paintings or photos created specifically for a particular style of wall arrangement.
# 3. Four rectangular paintings in vertical style
Four abstract paintings of equal size are arranged on the wall taking almost 2/3 of the wall space. All four paintings form almost a single large painting. In this style, the paintings seem to connect harmoniously together because of the similar painting theme.
Try different positions of individual paintings or photos and swap them around until you find that comfort and joyful feeling with your paintings or photos.
# 4. Nine rectangular paintings in vertical style
The colour scheme and paintings/pictures theme will add a great personal touch to the room’s atmosphere. Be daring and try adding a collection of your favourite paintings, pictures or photos on a single wall or part of wall space. Vary the distance between every single painting to create harmony and balance.
A collection of family photos, pets, nature, etc. could also be another idea to arrange on your living room wall.
# 5. A collection of small paintings
This style works really well with smaller paintings or family photos. I’m sure we all have a collection of family photos. Select your favourite collection and arrange them to suit your taste.
So far, all the painting styles (from #1 to # 5) have used the same wall space in a vertical style. Each style projects a slightly different feeling and a different touch. But they all share the same one thing, it’s a personal touch.
The arrangement of several paintings on a wall space works well when you select a collection or a theme. Individually, they may differ but they all follow a similar complementary style.
# 6. A single large painting in horizontal style
Displaying living room wall art in a horizontal format is probably the most common way to display wall art. This is likely to be the case with most of our living rooms as we normally have more horizontal wall spaces than vertical spaces. Furniture tends to use a lot of wall spaces.
In this example, one large painting stands out completely on its own. If you look closer, the painting colours contrast with all the other colours in the image. In actual fact, it blends nicely with the grey wall and the carpet (which is not shown in this image).
# 7. A large painting with two smaller paintings in horizontal style
I’ve added two square paintings below the large painting. I selected the two paintings to blend a little with the larger painting. The link between the three paintings is the light purple colour.
Those three paintings take up most of the wall space and follow no interior design rules. But I think it works.
# 8. Three large paintings in horizontal style
This is an interesting style. Three large horizontal paintings of the same length but different widths are arranged in a vertical format. When I was considering this style, I was looking through my paintings to find three large horizontal paintings to fit the entire length of the wall space to the skirting board. (That will be my next painting project!).
# 9. Three rectangular paintings in horizontal style
Similar, in a way, to # 8 above. These three vertical paintings are arranged to cover the wall space in a horizontal format. This style is probably one of the most common that many people use to hang a small collection of paintings or photos in their living rooms.
# 10. Five rectangular and square paintings in horizontal style
Adding another two square paintings, the five paintings create full coverage of the wall space. I suppose I could have added another two rectangular paintings instead of the square ones.
And, there you go. 10 inspiring ways to display wall art in living rooms.
It can show you how abstract wall art paintings or photos can be displayed on a variety of wall spaces to suit your needs in a normal ordinary living room. More importantly, it’s the feelings each style will add to your living room wall art.
I’ve used my abstract paintings to demonstrate the above living room wall art styles. But I’m sure the same styles will work well with other types of paintings, pictures and photos.
Abstract art can add great flexibility in arranging living room wall art. But to me, abstract art is much more than a piece of painting on a canvas. Each painting I create is a true story of my long journey in life. A journey that is full of ups and downs, challenges, successes and the many people I met and the places I visited around the world.
Like most abstract artists, I use the language of colours, shapes and lines as the vocabulary to paint each story. I’m not expecting you to be able to read my stories, but I’m hoping that you would be able to find your own.
The summary
Hanging a painting or a picture in your living room is a simple job. Adding a personal touch to your living room, however, is entirely a different challenge. Interior designers take into consideration almost every element in the room, from colour scheme to every single piece of furniture or item in your living room. That takes a considerable amount of experience and knowledge to implement.
In a perfect world, I would prefer to work with a blank canvas, i.e. a newly built house or revamping the entire living room or a house, which I have done almost a year ago.
But we don’t live in a perfect world. Most of us just need to add a simple personal touch to our living rooms to bring them a little more comfort and joy without the added cost and hassle of changing the entire living room’s décor.
If you can take away anything from this article to add your personal touch with paintings or photos, I would summarise it with the following simple points:
- The colour scheme of the paintings or photos.
- The theme of the paintings or photos.
- The size of an individual painting or photo.
- The arrangement of the painting(s) or photo(s) on your living room wall space.
And most importantly, abstract art is more than decoration.
Just follow your heart and listen to your feelings. You are displaying your paintings or photos to bring you comfort, joy and happiness creating a bespoke unique display. And that’s what counts at the end of the day.
Your comments are most welcome. Please leave your comments in the section below.
