No room in your house looks good if it lacks a certain feel, a sense that this is a unique room within your home. A simple act such as hanging up a few pictures can transform your space from a dull, lifeless room into a lively, bright area. The right pictures can enhance your room's color accents and bring a nice contrast, creating a room that welcomes you instead of turns you away. Not just any pictures will do, however - you need to make the proper choices as to what you will decorate your room with. This article is your guide to making your space come alive with art that you can hang up on your wall.
Shop for the Room
Your lifestyle and taste is the most important factor you considered when designing your home, so why shouldn't you decorate based on that principle, as well? Whatever you choose to do with a particular room, it is more in alignment with your purpose to choose based on what you want, instead of going with whatever the home fashion world says is 'in' at the moment.
No matter what room you feel needs decorating, your bedroom, bathroom, living room, etc., it is important that you have in mind what you want the room to do for your home. Do you want to entertain guests and have parties? Do you want peace and quiet? Is this a room that your kids can play in or a room that you will use for a hobby?
After you decide what the room is for, choosing a color scheme is easy, since you know what the room's purpose is. Neutral colors and mellow greens are excellent for giving the room a quiet feel; a lively yellow makes it clear that this is a room for the kids; a pale, tranquil blue is wonderful for making the room into an office or work space.
Now, thus far the purpose and color scheme is set. This gives you the proper groundwork on which to base a decision as to what is the best artwork to hang on the walls. Continuing the example in the previous paragraph, bright colorful cartoon-like pictures would be for the children's room, mellow floral pictures are great for a retreat area, and landscape or maybe animal portraits for a workroom.
Choosing the Style
Like the color scheme, art can alter a room's individual mood. Artwork hanging on a picture rail can serve as an anchor that holds the room together. It also can serve as the foundation for your particular style. Traditional, modern, contemporary, entertaining, casual and romantic styles are some of the possible options to select. This part of the process, like all the others, is completely dependant on your taste and desires for the room. Here are some ideas for implementing some of these schemes.
- Entertaining: The pictures could include bright, happy colors both in the print and on the frame. Subjects could include old-time comedic actors like the Three Stooges or Laurel & Hardy, or maybe pictures of dogs and cats playing with one another.
- Modern: Strong black accents in tapestries and iron frames combined with black-and-white photos create a sophisticated look. When this is combined with a modern color scheme, the effect is striking.
- Calm: Artwork with neutral, earthy colors combined with horizontal landscape subjects creates the feeling of a quiet retreat into Nature, away from modernity and the intense pressure of time.
You can also mix and match to create your own unique signature. Creating your own pieces is very satisfying and gives the room an extra personal touch.
How to Arrange the Pictures When Hanging
Deciding where and how to hang the pictures involves choosing the best placement in order to achieve the maximum effect. Deciding where to hang them also means giving the room a focal point as well as an individual character. Some possibilities to consider are:
- Give each piece breathing room to create the feel of an art gallery. This approach works very well in hallways. To do this, stand in the center of gravity for the first piece and take either one large step or two small steps to either side. This will give you an idea of how far apart to place each piece.
- When placing pictures above a sofa, hang the picture about six to nine inches above the sofa at eye level.
- If you have a number of pictures that have a similar theme, group them tightly together in order to create a statement and/or a focal point. This technique works equally well on walls that are both large and small.
- Place an odd number of pictures about the same size in a row on a horizontal plane. This achieves a sense of both balance and space.
Deciding where and how to hang your pictures in advance lets you know what size you will need and how many in order to get the look that you want.
Pictures are overlooked as a design accessory. Most likely, this is a result of many people's ignorance of how pictures can help improve a room. Plan everything out before making any purchasing decisions. This puts you in a much more negotiable position in terms of what you can use to make your room into a living space.
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