Four Tips for Home Art Displays

The walls of your home are a powerful place to express your personal style, interests, and even life philosophy. Here are four tips on home art display and using artworks to achieve a look that reflects you.

What constitutes “art” in a home setting? Paintings, prints, family photos, drawings, vintage magazine covers, advertisements, textiles, and many other types of material all fit the bill. This diversity is one reason why hanging art at home can make such a personal statement and it has such a profound effect on the look and feel of a room.

At the same time, hanging art around the house typically poses several special challenges. So what can you do?

Tip #1: Reflect What’s Public, What’s Private

Consider your beloved pieces and think about which would be most interesting and appealing to a broader audience, and which are most meaningful to your family or people you live with, while always staying true to your own tastes. Think about which rooms or areas have higher foot traffic and which are more intimate. This will allow you to start sorting in a way that will help you offer something suitable and appealing to each audience – including yourself.

Tip #2: Assess Your Wall Spaces

Available wall space is very often the biggest limiting factor in home art display, with windows, doorways, radiators, furniture, light fixtures, and other items all cutting down on potential display areas.

But don’t panic – there are always ways to leverage the spaces you do have for art around the house. Taking the time to make an informal assessment can help ensure that you make the most out of what’s available without cramming pieces into spaces where they don’t fit.?

Tip #3: Don’t Be Afraid of Change

Remember that when we see the same thing in the same place —?day in and day out —?we stop really SEEING it. Sometimes putting different pieces in different places can make them more visible.

Keeping your displays fresh is especially important if you have a family member who is an artist. Rotating their work can help show their evolution or harken back to old favorites and provide a fuller sense of their oeuvre.

Tip #4: Making a Gallery Wall Sing

Don’t neglect the excellent storytelling potential of a gallery wall. If you’re hanging family photos, consider having some sort of logical organization that gives the viewer a visual route. You could go chronologically from top to bottom or side to side, cluster groups of relatives or friends together, or find some other organizing principle that speaks to you.

Most often you’ll have diversely sized and shaped pieces in your gallery wall, so you’ll need to find a combination that holds together both from a distance and up close. Having some sense of a grid is usually a good strategy?—?but if a display is TOO orderly, viewers can lose sight of the pieces’ individual character.

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The above article has been modified from the original version on GallerySystem.com