5 Tips For Decorating with Fine Art

Is it time to change up your home dcor scheme? These top tips will help you navigate your options for decorating with fine art.

Tip #1: Start with What You Love

Using the things that you love about your current dcor to cue your fine art choices is a great beginning for your new plans. The principle of repeating color is helpful here and can be a guidepost for all of your decorating efforts: Pick fine art that incorporates the colors you most love from a room to tie things together with a look that won’t grow stale too soon.

Tip #2: Make Fine Art the Focal Point

Decorating with fine art is easy if you let the art take the center stage. Although you should love every item in a room, using fine art as the leading piece or pieces prevents visual competition and the feeling that a room is too busy. Especially since fine art is designed to be admired it’s important to allow your pieces a bit of breathing room.

Tip #3: Use Multiple Pieces to Up the Ante

When decorating with fine art, remember that fine art is rarely created to stand all on its own. Using multiple pieces that have the same style or the same artist creates cohesiveness. Depending on the art’s subject it might also strengthen the meaning of the pieces that you have chosen. At the same time, don’t shy away from mixing and matching; decorating with fine art is all about what works for you. If you want to hang pieces from different artists or even mix your own fine art pieces with a studio find, you can!

Tip #4: When to Decorate with Frames vs Canvas

Fine art may look fabulous on its original canvas or set off by a well-chosen frame. Here are a few things to consider when making your choice:

• Where the work will be hung. A work that is framed under glass placed opposite a light source may be subject to glare.
• Whether the room is modern or traditional. Frames are generally considered part of the traditional spectrum, although this is not always the case; a black or white frame can be just as modern as an unframed canvas.
• How large the piece and how spacious the wall. Especially if your goal is to go big, consider how much space you have for an unframed vs. a framed piece; chances are you can go larger with artwork without a frame, since a frame will add inches to the total dimension.

Tip #5: Hang Fine Art at Eye Level

Whether framed or unframed, fine art is at its most attention getting when the center of the print or canvas is hung at average eye level, at about 57" from the floor. You might be tempted to hang your art higher or lower depending on the height of your ceilings, but this is actually a good rule to follow no matter what the ceiling height is in your room. However, if you feel comfortable changing it up with a big piece or are hanging multiple pieces in the same area, breaking this "rule" is allowable if you like the result!