An Ultimate Guide on How to Choose Paintings for Home Décor and Interiors

Original Paintings Vs. Reproduced Painting Vs. Art Print

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.

Theme/category of Paintings

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.

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.

Painting Size

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.

Single Painting or a Set/Collage

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.

Paper or Canvas Print

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.

Primary Colors in the Painting, Frame Color

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.

Choosing the Frame

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.