Before we dive into how to choose paintings let’s go through some common terms generally associated with paintings, wall arts, frames.
Surface | Surface the art is painted or printed on, likes paper or canvas. |
Medium | Material to create the painting, like oil, acrylic, water color paint or charcoal, pencil etc. |
Frame | Frame is a border or a case that encloses the art. It enhances its looks and works as support to hang it on wall. |
Mount | Mount is a paper strip border around the art, that sits between the art outer edge and the frame inner edge. It enhances the look and prevents the art from sticking to the glass on top. |
Stretched Canvas | Wooden frame is behind the art and canvas wraps over the frame from front and sides. There is no visible frame and it can be hung on the wall. |
Glass/Acrylic Covering | The art on paper is covered with a glass or an acrylic on the top for protection. When the art is on canvas, it typically is not covered with glass/acrylic. |
Hooks | The paintings with frame or stretched canvas are fitted with hooks at the back for hanging. |
Without Frame | You may choose to buy a painting without frame. Artwork is rolled in a tube container. |
One website that allows you to use all these options and even to see how a painting looks when you make changes is Arte’Venue (https://artevenue.com). I haven’t see any other website that has this level of customization.
Go to ArteVenue.comThere are a plethora of decisions you have to make before you start looking for paintings. Let’s look at important ones.
Buying original painting
Like the originals & have the budget? By all means go for original
paintings. However, it will need much more time and effort in finding
the right art that gels with your interiors. It will be at least 5-6
times costlier than the art print. A well known artist’s painting
would cost you much more than this. But you will, after all, have
an original art on the wall.
Buying reproduced paintings
A cost effective option is to employ a local artist to reproduce an
original artwork. If you opt for it, please be aware that outcome
may not be what you expect. The original paintings are unique and
only an art print can reproduce accurately through high quality
prints.
Buying art prints
If your main objective is a beautiful home décor and don’t want
to spend exorbitantly, I suggest you
go for art prints.
It is the best option to buy art for home décor.
There are huge options to choose from, it’s easier to find artworks
that gel with your décor, easy to order and much friendly on pockets.
The themes traditionally most liked by people
are abstract, floral and landscape. Now-a-days lot of
people want modern, contemporary and different look and choose
themes such as minimalistic,
cityscape, black & white, vintage, maps and many more different
ones.
It’s quite difficult to define a certain guideline on
choosing the theme. Based on what I have seen people buying mostly,
as a board guideline you can look at following themes.
Living room, behind sofa | Abstract, floral, landscape, cityscape |
Bedroom, behind bed | Floral, landscape, abstract, buddha, cityscape |
Above console/table | Floral, inspirational, buddha, animals, nature, botanical decorative, figurative, fashion, maps, museum,signs |
Study room | Inspiration, botanical, floral |
A teenager/young adult's room | Pop culture, movie posters, sports, automobiles |
Kid’s room | Children, animals |
Foyer | Sunrise/sunset, floral, abstract |
Stairway | Floral, figurative, cityscape, ocean, vintage, maps, abstract |
Dining room | Abstract, floral, figurative, cityscape, vintage, museum, kitchen, food |
You can be different and choose a mix of various themes or a single theme to create a gallery wall set (collage) that looks really impressive and classy. A designer can do this better but you may give it a try.
Arte’Venue (https://artevenue.com/gallery-walls) has some really cool collection of gallery wall sets. I have not seen such an impressive collection in India. Furthermore, you can filter the collection by room, placement, color etc. Truly unique and a class apart! It has been an instant hit with people.
Behind Sofa or above your bed:
Choose the width of about 70% of the width of sofa or bed. For ex, if your
sofa is 60 inches (5 feet) wide, then choose the artwork with width that
is approximately 40-45 inches. The height of the artwork can be about
1/3rd to 2/3rd of the width. You may even choose a set of paintings that
covers the wall area mentioned here. Needless to say you have to go for
horizontal (or landscape orientation).
Above a chest, console or table:
The width of the artwork can be approximately 75% to 100% of the width of
the chest or table. Now, when it comes to height, you can look at the
orientation of the chest or table and try and keep the orientation of
the artwork also same. For an example, if the width of chest or table is
more than the height, then choose an artwork that has horizontal orientation.
This is a matter choice and what you think looks better. One simple guideline that you may consider - If you go for a single painting, which means it will be bigger in size, then it should have greater details in the painting. Meaning, if the painting has just one or two large shapes/figures/objects/blocks without any details within and in monotonous colors then it may not look that good. Paintings like landscape, scenary, cityscape, abstract, floral with details would look good as single painting too.
There is a high demand now for a gallery wall/collage, where it's a set of 2 or more paintings. When it is styled very well, it looks amazing on the wall. You can even have one large painting cut into 2 or 3 large pieces and hang on the wall as a set.
Canvas prints are as close to the real paintings as it can get.
Canvas has always been prized for its excellent colour absorption.
The fabric material can soak up lot more ink than the wood fibres
of a poster and that’s why canvas prints achieve truly eye popping
colour saturation. They really look impressive. From a distance you
won’t even know if it’s a painting or a print.
With canvas you also
have an option to get it stretched.
Paper prints are good too and look quite impressive on the wall.
They are covered with an acrylic sheet and can have mount that adds
a great look to the artwork and protects the paper print.
It’s cheaper than canvas.
I would definitely recommend a canvas print. I am sure you will be happy.
The primary colors in painting can be either contrast to the wall color or gel with it. If you want the painting to stand out in the room, go for contrast colors and keep the furniture colors subtle.
You should look to match, as far as possible, the frame color to that of the furniture in the room.
A couple things to keep in mind while chosing the frame are the frame width and the color. Choose the frame width which is about 1/10th or less of the painting width. Frame width bigger than this may result in frame taking away the focus from the painting. For an example, if the painting image size is 10 inch, then frame width can be 1 inch or less.
If you go with a frame that is very intricately designed, styled or designer kind of frame, then you want to highlight the frame too. So it can bigger in size as compared to a guideline of 1/10th of painting width.
As far as possible, try and match the frame color to the color of furniture in the room. This makes the artwork gel with your room décor.
If you haven’t done this before, believe me it is a daunting task. When you have finalized the theme, size, colors etc, finding the one that you like is very time consuming and confusing at times.
It’s always better to actually see and feel it before
you buy, isn’t it? So if you ask me I might at once say go get it from
a physical art gallery/store. But then you end up with another issue –
the time and effort it takes and the limited options. You may have to
visit a scores of stores, go through so many paintings one-by-one,
visualize how it may look on your wall and you get to pick from very
limited choices.
This is where the online world comes to your rescue. It is so much
more comfortable to do it while sitting at your home, at your own
time and no one pushing or looking over your shoulder. Saves you
lot of time and effort, gives infinite choices and some websites
also help you virtually see it on the wall.
See it physically and exactly know the colors etc. |
See the quality before buying |
Highly time consuming & cumbersome |
Limited options |
Searching is very cumbersome |
Customization may not be available |
Limited discounts |
Saves time and effort |
Can do it at your own time |
Lot more options to choose from |
Searching is much easier |
Option to virtually see it on wall |
More discounts and offers |
Ease of ordering and returns |
May have doubt on the colors in painting you may get |
Can't actually see the quality |
There are a good number of sellers you will find when you want to
buy paintings online for home décor and interiors. There are websites
dedicated to art and websites that sell art along with other home
décor products and then there are giant marketplaces like amazon,
flipkart and more. So where do you go?
Here are a few things you can evaluate the online sellers for before spending time on their websites to find and buy paintings.
How many paintings do they have in their collection? With just hundred odd in a category you don’t really have much choice.
Are the artworks neatly categorized by subjects like abstract, floral, landscape, vintage, photography, inspirational, nature etc. so can you easily navigate to what you need?
Artworks of world famous artists, minimalistic, pop culture, line art, cityscapes, vastu compliant etc, theme based gallery wall sets and collages. Makes it easy to find what you are looking for.
Can you filter on the size, color, orientation, etc. These really help when you are looking to paintings with specific size, and colors. Otherwise it takes so much more time and effort to locate.
For an example, if you were looking for a ‘Scandinavian’ theme based paintings, can you search for it and see only those? This is such an important factor in saving your time and effort.
It helps in decision making when you can visualize the paintings in different settings, different wall colors.
This one important factor. As I see that lot of people realized they brought a smaller size than what they should have. If website offers some help to determine the size, it would help a lot of people.
Can you decide your own size, choose frame, choose the mount size and color or buy it as stretched canvas?
It's an art website and if it's not pleasing to look at, why bother?
When you are not sure of what paintings will suit your interiors or getting confused, a designer can help you.
What materials are used in framing? Can it be returned if you don’t like the quality?
A very important part is what quality you are going to get. Most people would shy away from buying online for this one particular reason.
There are primarily two parts to it. One is the quality of the print – how well the original art is reproduced and second is quality of framing – what framing materials are used and the finish. I want you to be aware of the fact that there various factors that impact price of a good quality art print – the paper/canvas quality, licensed art print (where seller pays a fees to the artist for every sale), framing materials and workmanship.
I have seen some online sellers selling artworks for just a couple hundred rupees. Be aware that you will not a get good quality print and frame for that price. Being online you can't see the quality and get duped by buying the cheap quality artworks. When you buy paintings for home décor, I am sure you don’t want a flimsy quality up on the wall. So how do you judge what quality you are going to get?
Here are some pointers –
Let me point you to Arte’Venue (https://www.artevenue.com) It offers a premium online art buying experience not seen before in India art websites. What distinguishes it from others is -