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How To Pick Art For Your Home

*Today’s post was made possible by PSTR Studio, and features gifted product for the purposes of a candid review. All opinions are my own.

Choosing specific art prints, paintings, and drawings for our space is something I do with a lot of intentionality for two reasons. First, I majored in studio art and art history in college, so art curation is a skill that I’ve honed semi-professionally for decades. And the other reason is that our home doesn’t actually have that much wall space for art. I spoke about this on Monday, but we have a lot of chair rail trim in our retro ranch, which makes it hard to hang multiple pieces of art at once (think: a gallery wall). I have to be really selective with the framed prints and canvases that I bring into our home, so today I thought I’d share the three things that I keep in mind when choosing art in case you’re curious how we narrow things down to our core collection. Keep scrolling for my tips, plus a peek at the most recent art pieces that we added to our space, all from PSTR Studio.

How To Pick Art For Your Home

How To Pick Art For Your Home:

1. Consider the size of your available wall space: Scale is a really important factor when choosing art for you home for pretty obvious reasons. You want to make sure it’ll fit on your walls! It might seem like overkill, but make sure you get a tape measure out when ordering art online and map out the exact dimensions on your wall to be sure that it will fit nicely in the space. We chose an oversized version of Fleurs et Plantes by William Morris specifically to fit an awkwardly large section of wall in our front living room. The bold pattern and color scheme of the print help give this blank wall lots of interest. Anything smaller might have looked off balance.

2. Choose something that truly speaks to you: If you’re having trouble choosing from a vast online art catalog, my advice is to follow your heart. As cheesy as that might sound, picking art for sentimental reasons has never, ever let me down. If you spot something that brings back a fond memory or reminds you of a special place in time, then chances are good that you’ll have that piece of art for a lifetime. For example, I chose this Cuddles by Enikő Eged print because it reminds me so much of the relationship between our current black cat, Marlo, and our late white cat, Joe. The two of them used to snuggle up on the sofa just like the felines in this print, and now that Joe is no longer with us, I cherish this piece of art to remind me of them together. You just can’t go wrong with sentimental art—trust me.

3. Let your color palette guide your selections: If size and sentimentality are too ambiguous of parameters to guide your art purchasing, though, my best piece of advice is to simply follow your home’s color palette. We picked The Swan III by Jörgen Hansson because it pulled from the existing palette of our space, which is full of greenish blue tones. When I was just starting out in my homemaking journey as an adult, I often defaulted to buying art based on colors alone. It always seemed to work for me then, and still does today. This will help you narrow down options fast, and makes it easy to put together cohesive gallery walls based on matching color tones. You can actually search the art collection on PSTR Studio by color specifically, so try that filtering technique and see what sticks out to you.

Do you have any of your own tips for choosing art for a space? I think a lot of it comes down to experimenting, like a lot of aspects of decorating, so don’t be too hard on yourself if you try something that doesn’t quite work after all. The beauty of art is that each piece ever made is the right fit for someone, so if your investment wasn’t quite right, consider reselling it to inspire someone else, or put it in storage if it’s just too special to part with. Who knows…It might end up working perfectly in your space later on as your style evolves. I have tons of art in storage that I rotate out when a room design becomes a good fit for it. I also love keeping excess art in storage because it allows me to change up a room without having to buy anything new. Leave your own art sourcing tips in the comments, and let me know which piece you’d pick from the PSTR Studio collection this way.

Psssst…Did you catch my big news yesterday? Visit the Home Matters newsletter for more on my “dream come true” moment.

The other day on Instagram, I received a message from one of my followers asking about the chair rail trim in our home. They were curious how this painted wooden accent flowed throughout our home, and also how we “stopped” it when moving from a room that had chair rail into one that didn’t have chair rail. Truth be told, we didn’t install this trim in our home. It was here when we moved in, and had been put in place (we assume) by the original homeowners back when the house was built in 1966. This is actually our first time ever living in a home that had chair rail trim, and we absolutely love it. It adds such a nice touch of elegance to the spaces that have it, so I thought I’d spend a blog post talking through our particular chair rail layout in case it helps those of you looking to replicate this retro look in your own homes.

First, I should mention that not all of the rooms in our home have chair rail. It was installed in our snug lounge area (pictured above just off to the side of our kitchen), sunroom, dining room, entryway, and primary bedroom. Our hallway, two extra bedrooms, front living room, and bathrooms don’t have chair rail. Since we live in a traditional 1960s ranch, you probably won’t be surprised to hear that we have zero “open concept” rooms. Each room is its own distinct space with four walls, so the previous homeowners were able to pick and choose which rooms had chair rail without worrying about where to “stop” it.

The only exception to that is in our entryway, which you’ll see pictured below where the botanical wallpaper meets the blush pink-painted lower section of the wall. There is a line of chair rail almost all the way around our entry, but when the space makes a 90-degree lefthand turn down our hallway toward the bedrooms, the trim had to have a stopping point. To do so, the previous homeowners simply cut the trim at a 45-degree angle, effectively giving it a clean transition from trimmed wall to clean wall. Another option in case you’re trying to figure out how to stop your chair rail trim from one space to the next is to create a squared-off end cap using two opposite 45-degree-angle cuts, as shown in this YouTube video. This simple hack makes your chair rail transition look really clean and intentional.

I really love our chair rail trim, especially because it makes it really easy for me to use two different wall treatments in one room (one above and a different one below the chair rail), but I will say that it has created some challenges when it comes to decorating. Because they effectively cut your walls in half, chair rail trim makes it difficult to hang large collections of art from floor to ceiling. I’ve found that I have significantly less wall space for art in this house. It also lends rooms a more traditional tone rather than modern, which is something that I think I’m still adjusting to as I’m a pretty major modernist when it comes to décor.

Since sharing our home online, I’ve gotten some feedback from followers who say that the chair rail in our primary bedroom is “wrong,” but I vehemently disagree. Yes, chair rail is intended for rooms that actually have chairs in them, but a person should never call anything in someone’s private home “wrong.” It was a choice that I had to adopt from the previous homeowners, but I like it, so there’s absolutely nothing wrong with it. If you love chair rail trim, then install it in your space! Whether the room is meant for seating or not, chair rail trim immediately elevates the look and style of a room. Moral of the story: Don’t sleep on this beautiful, classic decorative accent. We love it in our home, and hope you’ll consider trying it in yours, too.

Let me know in the comments if you have questions or if you need direction/tips for how to incorporate it into the flow of your floor plan. I’m happy to help! Oh, and while I have you, make sure you sign up for the DGD Home Matters newsletter if you haven’t already. I’ve got some really exciting news to share this Wednesday. You won’t want to miss it! Sign up here.

How To Pick Art For Your Home

How To Pick Art For Your Home:

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