How to Choose Abstract Art for Your Home: Size, Colour and Placement

What do I choose? What size? Where should it go? And what if I get it wrong?

Lets face it, choosing artwork can be daunting.

What looks fantastic on your phone in the car while scrolling at school pick up, can look completely different alongside your eclectic lounge, last year's coloured feature wall and that old chair that came with your partner!

There's really only one rule I like to apply when starting... Have some idea about the space you're choosing the artwork for.

Is it a meeting place in your home? A quiet study space? A bedroom? Or somewhere for energetic fun and colourful conversations?

I let that dictate the feeling I want from the art before I start worrying about colours, frames or whether something technically "matches".

Too complicated?

Then remember this and this only... It doesn't need to match the curtains and cushions!

Start with how you want the room to feel

Before you start searching for abstract wall art for your home, think about what actually happens in the space.

A bedroom might call for something quieter. A living room where everyone gathers might be able to take something much more energetic. A study could suit something structured and graphic. A dining area might be exactly the place for a piece that's loud, colourful and starts conversations.

But none of those are rules.

If a giant hot-pink artwork makes you ridiculously happy every time you walk into your bedroom, I'm not going to tell you it isn't "restful" enough.

The point is simply to have a starting place.

Instead of asking what colour artwork goes with my sofa?, try asking how do I want this room to feel?

That's a much more interesting question.

Size: don't be frightened of going big

One of the most common things I notice is artwork that's simply too small for the space it's trying to fill.

You have a beautiful three-metre sofa, a huge blank wall... and then a little artwork floating somewhere above it looking slightly terrified.

Scale can completely change a room.

A larger artwork can anchor a space and often makes the whole room feel more resolved. It doesn't necessarily make the room feel smaller either. Sometimes the opposite happens. One substantial piece can feel calmer and less cluttered than a collection of smaller things trying to fill the same wall.

Before buying, measure the wall. Then measure it again because, if you're anything like me, you've already forgotten the first measurement.

Use painter's tape to mark out the dimensions of the artwork on the wall. Stand back. Sit on the sofa. Walk out of the room and come back in.

Even better, take a straight-on photograph of the wall and mock the wall art into the space. It doesn't need to be perfect. You're simply trying to understand the scale.

And remember that a 100 × 100 cm artwork sounds enormous when you're reading the measurements on your phone.

On a large wall, it may not be enormous at all.

Or think of a gallery wall as one big piece

Of course, going big doesn't have to mean buying one enormous artwork.

I love a cluster or gallery wall of smaller pieces. They draw you in. You find yourself stepping closer to look at each work individually, but when I'm deciding where to place a gallery wall in a room, I tend to stand back and think of the whole collection as one large object on the wall.

That makes working out the scale much easier.

And there really are no rules about what has to go together.

A gallery wall can be beautifully curated, with a common colour palette, similar artwork or a deliberate theme running through it. Or it can be completely eclectic: paintings, prints, photographs, drawings, things you've collected while travelling, something your child made, something you found at an op shop.

Personally, I like a bit of the latter.

The same goes for the frames. I don't think everything needs to match. In fact, when every frame is exactly the same, a gallery wall can start to feel a little like a designer showroom.

Different timbers, black frames, old frames, new frames, different widths and finishes can give the wall personality. More importantly, it can make the collection feel as though it has actually been collected over time, rather than bulk purchased after a couple of G&T's on the porch.

I've even used safety signs, of all things, as artwork in my son's room. He loves anything to do with building, so I bought a collection of signs from the hardware store and put them into simple poster frames sourced from that Swedish retailer in varying sizes.

I used some of the larger signs as features on the wall, then nested a group of smaller ones together to create a gallery wall.

They look awesome.

And really, that's the point. Anything goes.

Art for your walls doesn't have to come from a gallery, or even have been created as "art" in the first place. If it catches your eye, means something to you or simply makes the room feel more like yours, put it on the wall.

You can absolutely make an eclectic gallery wall feel cohesive. There might be a colour that appears in several pieces, a loose theme, similar spacing or simply the overall shape of the arrangement.

But don't get so caught up in making every individual piece work perfectly with the one beside it that you forget to stand back.

From across the room, you're not really looking at twelve little artworks anymore.

You're looking at one big one.

Colour: complement, contrast or completely ignore

This is where people can get themselves into knots.

Does the artwork need some green because the chair is green? Is the pink too pink? Should the frame match the timber coffee table?

You can pick up colours already in the room. Sometimes repeating a tiny colour from somewhere else in the space works beautifully.

You can also choose something that contrasts completely.

A predominantly neutral room can handle an enormous hit of colour.

A colourful room can sometimes benefit from something quieter. And an eclectic room can happily take even more eclecticism if that's what you love.

Your artwork doesn't need to obediently coordinate with everything around it.

In fact, sometimes the slightly unexpected choice is what stops a room looking as though it arrived as a complete package on the back of a furniture truck.

Where should it go?

There are plenty of formulas for hanging artwork. Eye level. A certain number of centimetres above the sofa. Two-thirds the width of the furniture underneath it.

They're useful guides, but they're not commandments.

What matters more is the relationship between the artwork and everything around it.

If you're hanging a piece above a sofa, bed or console, don't let it float miles above the furniture. You want the artwork and furniture to feel visually connected.

Give the work enough breathing room that it isn't fighting with a doorway, television, lamp or enormous indoor plant.

And look at the whole wall rather than the artwork in isolation.

Sometimes moving a piece 15 centimetres can make an irritatingly large difference.

Paper or canvas?

I first began my print journey with great excitement, ordering the largest fine art paper prints I could get professionally printed.

I loved them. They were loud and large!

When I unrolled that first delivery I genuinely felt joy. Seeing my work at that scale was fantastic.

Then I got to the framer.

Cue the record scratch.

My prints were so big that I quickly discovered a few things.

Firstly, I couldn't get the beautiful non-reflective art glass I wanted at that size, so I had to use acrylic instead. It still looks great, but it does show reflections.

Secondly, I couldn't get a mount cut from a single piece at that size. It would need to be constructed from two separate pieces.

And then came the framing quotes.

Holy $h!te!!

Now, these were for my own home and they were my very first prints, so I pushed on, mortgaged a kidney and gave the go-ahead! But framing those large paper works cost me thousands.

I could have produced canvas prints at the same size for around half the overall cost. Still not cheap, because professionally produced and framed large-scale art isn't cheap, but it was a very different proposition.

That experience taught me something important when I started developing my Fine art prints.

Fine art paper is beautiful. It has a lovely tactile quality and, properly framed, gives you that classic work-on-paper presentation. For smaller and medium-sized pieces, it can be a wonderful choice.

But as you go larger, canvas starts to make a lot of practical sense. It doesn't require glazing or a mount, it's considerably lighter, and you can achieve a really substantial piece of art without the framing costs escalating quite so dramatically.

Neither is the "better" option. They're simply different.

If you love the refinement of a framed work on paper, choose paper.

If you're dreaming about a really large statement piece and don't particularly fancy remortgaging the house to frame it, canvas might just be your friend.

And what about the frame?

I tend to take my cues from the other furniture and finishes already in the room. Not because I want everything to match exactly, but because it gives me a starting point.

If there's light timber in the room, I'll usually choose something from that end of the palette. It doesn't need to be the exact same timber or colour. In fact, I'd probably prefer that it wasn't. It just needs to feel like it belongs in the same conversation.

There are exceptions. Classic black and white images? I love them in a black frame no matter what's going on around them.

I've also learned to trust my framer.

Admittedly, there are framers who would happily send you home with an ornate gold gilt frame, three layers of matting and the kitchen sink if you let them. But most good framers take enormous pride in their work and have a very good eye for what will make an artwork sing without overwhelming it.

Custom framing is the deluxe option, though, and it can be price prohibitive for many people. So don't discount the off-the-shelf options either.

There are some fantastic ready-made frames, often with a mount already included, available from our favourite Swedish furniture retailer or the red-circle boutique. You don't have to spend hundreds of dollars every time you want to put something beautiful on the wall.

With a little care around proportions, mount size and frame choice, an inexpensive ready-made frame can look amazing and absolutely set a room alight.

Quite often, if I am having something custom framed, I'll take a photo on my phone of the room and the actual wall where the piece will hang. It gives the framer a baseline to work from: the wall colour, timber, furniture, scale and general feel of the space.

That's particularly helpful when you're standing in a framing shop surrounded by hundreds of tiny frame samples trying to imagine what one of them will look like around a metre-wide artwork in your living room.

So take the photo. Show them the room. Tell them what you like and, just as importantly, what you don't.

Then let them do what they're good at.

And remember, the frame doesn't have to match the furniture. It just needs to work with the artwork and the space it's going to live in.

You can see the framing options I offer with my canvas wall art in my Framing Guide.

What if I get it wrong?

Are you kidding? I'm not afraid to say I get things wrong too! 

But sometimes that's where the serendipity lies.

I've hung a hook too low, decided I couldn't be bothered moving it, and ended up sitting the artwork on the Sideboard instead.

Wow!! It looked great.

Add a lamp beside it and voilà. Suddenly the mistake looked completely intentional.

That's the thing about art in a home. You don't have to find its one perfect position and commit to it for the next twenty years.

I change my spaces often. Sometimes it's the only way to get a really deep clean! But it also changes the atmosphere and energy of a room. It's a bit like smudging with sage, except I'm moving furniture and artwork around instead.

Move an artwork to another wall and you'll notice different colours in it. Put it in another room and it can take on a completely different personality. Something that felt quiet in one space might suddenly become the hero in another.

There is no one spot for the art in my home.

It moves with the season, the space and, more importantly, the feeling I want the room to have.

I've also learned that keeping framing relatively simple gives me much more freedom to do that. If the artwork itself is colourful and bold, I tend to choose classic, simple frames. No twirly bits.

Apart from letting the artwork do the talking, a simple frame gives the piece longevity. It isn't tied quite so tightly to one particular interior style, which makes it much easier to move from a bedroom to a living room, from a coloured wall to a white one, or eventually into a completely different home.

So what if you get it wrong?

Move it.

Lean it.

Rehang it.

Put it somewhere you hadn't considered.

You might discover that the "wrong" spot was actually better than the carefully planned one.

And if it isn't?

There's always another wall.

So, where do you start?

Start with the space and how you want it to feel.

Measure your wall. Be brave enough to consider something bigger than you first imagined. Don't panic if the colours don't perfectly match. And choose something you actually want to live with.

I'm sure, like me, you can remember a picture that hung on the wall at your Nan's house. Or a poster in the hallway at a friend's or neighbour's place that, for whatever reason, made an impression on you that's lasted.

I certainly can.

At my Nan's house she had a series of Toulouse-Lautrec tea towels she'd had framed after a trip to Paris. I remember the can-can dancers. I remember the colours and the typography.

Looking back, I'm sure they planted a little seed for my love of graphic design and the printed word. They also gave me an early understanding that what you hang on a wall doesn't have to be a traditional photograph or painting.

It just needs to catch your eye.

You might not even realise at the time why something has stayed with you.

But it's living proof that what we hang on our walls can become part of how we feel about a place and what we remember about it.

Because long after the cushions have been replaced, the feature wall has been repainted and somebody has finally convinced your partner that the chair has to go, the artwork may still be there.

So make it count.

Make it make you feel something.

Browse my fine art abstract prints, available on fine art paper or canvas in a range of sizes, with framed canvas options ready to hang.