Art Installations in Luxury Interiors: 11 Tips to Curate Your Space
One of the best ways to add your personality to your home is through art that you love. You may already be a serious collector or just love to have your kids’ artwork beautifully framed. Either way, artwork elevates interiors.
We can help you find ways to show off your artwork in the best way. Here are some great examples of art installations in luxury interiors. We’ve also included some tips for figuring out the best way to display your art on your own.
Curating Art
The best art collections are a mix of things you love. This can be a range from a traditional portrait you’ve inherited to a funky sculpture that spoke to you at an art fair, from a print you bought in a museum shop to an abstract mixed-media piece you scored at an online auction. The most important thing is to choose pieces that speak to you.
Where To Find Art for Your Art Installations
Think locally: In addition to all the wonderful galleries around Atlanta, we have so many festivals where you can meet the artists and peruse their work. Check out Arts ATL to keep up to date on art events.
Act globally (while out and about and while out of town): Art is also a great memento of a favorite trip or event. We’ve seen rooms that include a Chagall lithograph, a folk art sculpture and a framed concert poster, and these diverse pieces can sing together.
Search online: There are so many great sites for finding art online. Of course Etsy is always a favorite. Our clients also like 1stDibs and Saatchi Art, to name a few.
We’ll look through some of the wonderful artwork our clients have collected here. And we’ll use those examples to help guide curating your own art installations at home.
Use Art To Infuse a Room With Color
This elegant kitchen has a lot of neutral tones. So bringing in a colorful painting of flowers infused the room with color and life. When planning paint colors, think about artwork you may want to display in the room.
Botanicals, like the one seen here, are also a great way to bring biophilic elements, aka nature-inspired elements, into your space. Biophilic design promotes wellness and happy feelings.
Maintain Proper Space Around a Work of Art
Spacing: This abstract bird painting sits just right between cabinetry. It’s large enough to have a strong presence on the wall. But there’s enough wall space around it to let it breathe.
Lighting: Lighting art is important. We flanked the painting with sconces that not only illuminate the painting, but also work with the finish on the frame.
Walls: You also want to think about what’s behind your art. This can mean color and texture. Here we added textured wallcovering on the wall. These finishes work beautifully with the colors in the painting and the frame. Another consideration is molding on the walls.
Use Art To Make a Strong First Impression
Give a hint as to what to expect: Artwork in an entry can tell your visitors a lot about your personality and what awaits in the rest of the house. For example, this large-scale painting greets guests as they are welcomed through the front door. It also sets the tone for the house. It’s unexpectedly moody, a little wild, and traditional with an edge.
Scale: Here, the large size stands up to the double doors. And the dark color adds contrast that picks up on the colors in the beautiful tile mosaic floor. Don’t be afraid to hang a large work in a small space. Make a statement!
It’s OK To Have Some Fun With a Theme
In luxury interior design, sometimes we tend to shy away from being too “theme-y.” However, there are some great times to embrace a theme with artwork. For example, our clients loved the idea of displaying a movie poster collection in the home theater we remodeled for them.
Other ways to group include favorite pieces from special trips, photography and children’s artwork. In addition to home theaters, children’s rooms are one of the best places to have fun with a theme.
Learn more about this basement renovation
Tie Artwork Together
For Two to Three Pieces: When you have a similar series of works, such as botanicals, portraits, bookplates, maps, landscapes or seascapes, you may want to tie them together with matching frames and mats. Using the same frames and mats on these two works gives them a pleasingly cohesive look.
For More: On a larger gallery wall, you can go with matching frames. But it can be more interesting to use a mix of finishes. Silver, gold, black, white and even some pops of color from frames can all work well together.
Group Similar Pieces Together
Best mates: These bold midcentury pieces add loads of color to a playful lower level game room. Pairing them side-by-side gives them the look of a diptych and doubles their impact.
Compose your arrangement: Follow these steps for pre-hanging prep to find the right arrangement, then hang your artwork.
- Lay your works on the floor to get a feel for how you want to arrange them.
- Find your “top line” on the wall. We recommend that there are some places for the eye to rest for an organized look. Placing a line of painter’s tape at the top height the top of the framed works will land is a great guideline to have.
- When you have a good idea of an arrangement that works, make paper templates that match the size of each piece. Arrange them on the wall using painter’s tape. Once that’s done, you’re ready to hang.
- Step back. Get a sense of whether or not there is enough space between your paper templates.
- Working with the wire, figure out where the nail will need to go to make your framed work fit perfectly on your paper template. You can nail the paper to the wall and rip it down when you’re done
- Wah-lah! Hang up your works and admire
Treat Your Favorite Objects as Art
Anything can be art: Beloved plates, teacups, transferware and other china and pottery can also serve as art. In this case, our clients wanted us to replace a row of upper cabinets with open shelves. They wanted to show off their exquisite ceramics collection.
Lighting: We added a trio of sconces above them to illuminate the collection on the shelves.
Consider Art Lighting
Once you’re sure of the placement for a certain piece or pieces, consider how you’d like to light it. So far we’ve seen sconces next to and above artwork. The type of art light seen above the plates here allows light to wash down the piece, highlighting it for all to see. It also elevates the look of the kitchen.
Make Your Art Pop
Art can serve as a great jumping-off point when designing a room. Our ceramic-loving clients chose a deep rich gray for the family room located off their kitchen. It makes the light mats on their framed artwork over the sofa pop. And it picks on in the graphite tones in the work.
