Five tips to elevate your wall art

Five tips to elevate your wall art By Slay My Print 

Deciding which posters to hang up on your wall in your youth was such a painstaking process. Should you position your new Justin Timberlake poster next to your old NSYNC one? The white tack or sellotape providing a great way to ruin your perfectly painted bedroom wall was a necessity for plastering your entire room with your favourite celebrities of the time.

Although we may have moved on from sticking Justin and the gang on our walls and staring lovingly at him, the need for a decorated wall remains. We’re proper grown-ups now, and the way we adorn our walls has started to reflect that. The art in our homes is now more sophisticated and tasteful - it’s an expression of who we are, our tastes, and finishes off any interior decor. 

Choosing prints is an important part of any home decor, but is it possible to elevate wall art to the next level? We’ve put together some handy tips for how to elevate your wall art. 

The bigger, the better

When it comes to wall art, size really matters. But is there such a thing as ‘too big’?

We think not. Prints that are too small for a space can often look stranded and lost on the wall, and a collection of small pieces hung up together can look more just like wall clutter than a proper feature. 

It’s important to consider scale when choosing a piece, remember that one large piece taking centre stage in a room can make the whole space appear bigger. 

The large print works as a sort of window, so rather than closing off the room, the piece opens the room up and gives the illusion of more space. 

We think the bigger a print is, the better it looks! Art in the home should be impactful and attention-grabbing. No one wants their pieces of art disappearing into nothingness!

Consider location

Location is key to elevating wall art. No one wants to walk into a room and feel as though there’s something not quite right about the layout. The location of wall art has a huge impact on this, if a piece is off-centre it can throw off the feel of the entire room. 

You don’t want your wall art to be half-under a light fitting as it will make the piece look strange and poorly lit. Think about an art gallery, each piece is properly lit and centred under a light, this gives the artwork a chance to be appreciated properly!

Take the time to hang your wall art at the right height - make sure that the centre point of the piece is at eye level. It feels like an inconvenience to be staring up or down to admire the art, similar to how you feel if your TV isn’t quite at the right height. Obviously, eye height is different for everyone, so use your best judgement for the average height of people in your household and hang the pieces accordingly.

If you’re placing wall art behind a piece of furniture, it’s important to ensure that it should hang at the centre point of the furniture. If the piece is off-centre behind the furniture, it makes the entire room look wonky! When hanging behind furniture, be sure to vertically centre the wall art from the highest point of the furniture to the ceiling, so the space between the furniture and the art is the same as the space between the art and the ceiling.

Think about wall colour

The backdrop for the art plays an important role in making the wall art pop! 

Placing art on a white wall can help brighten up the wall itself and doesn’t compete for attention with the art, but placing art on a contrasting wall colour to the piece can help it really pop. Don’t be afraid to paint a wall to help bring your pieces to life. Let the colours jump out! 

By painting a feature wall to display special pieces on, the art is really celebrated and creates more of a feature for them. If you’re investing time and money into choosing art and frames for your home, it makes sense to invest some thought into the colour of the wall they’re being hung on. You need a good foundation for your pieces! 

So what colour should you pick? Well, it depends on the piece, but it’s good to use a colour wheel to help you choose. Try to go for a colour opposite the main one of your piece, and then choose a deep shade of that. Deeper colours generally help bring out the brightness of the artwork. 

Consider a gallery wall

Gallery walls are becoming more and more popular across social media, but how can you elevate one? 

As with choosing a bigger piece, it’s still important that your gallery wall takes up a large space. You don’t want a collection of three small pieces on a huge wall because the art will be lost and not look as impactful. 

Give your room a more eclectic look by framing your various pieces of art in different frames. Choosing different, but still complementary, frames can elevate your wall and this gives you the opportunity to match each frame to the individual pieces of art. Make sure all of the frames still complement each other! 

Use oversized frames

For special pieces that you want to draw special attention to, why not try an oversized frame? 

Give your wall art some breathing space between the edge of the piece and the frame. Sometimes, having that space between the piece and the frame lets the eyes hone in on the piece.

This also works really well for those special photos that can’t be blown up to fit a large space without losing the image quality. If you have a print or photo that you really love, but it’s too small to comply with this rule, you might be able to have it framed with a more generously sized frame to increase its overall size and give it a greater wall presence. 

Obviously, there are some limits with this; you don’t want your 4” x 6” print in a frame four times that size. The size of the frame should complement the piece, not dwarf it!