How to use Art to Influence your Interior Decor

Considering the job involves putting careful thought into determining the best colour scheme and furnishing for any given room, interior design has always involved an artistic eye to some degree. Whether it’s the natural influence on William Morris’s wallpaper or the choice and placement of a painting, poster, or photograph within a room, art is a key factor in making decisions about interior design itself.

But works of art themselves can have a huge impact on interior decoration as well. From garish, eye-catching pop art to more understated cues from the minimalist movement, the possibilities are endless for how art can inspire a property’s interior decor. Here, we’ll run through a few ways that the art world can give you some ideas on ways to decorate your home.

Make your walls look like your favourite paintings

Posters and hung art are a classic way to adorn the walls of a home, but for an even more impactful design idea, having a mural painted inside your home is a brilliant decorative touch. Whilst pop art murals are often available as wallpaper, these can be painted directly onto your wall which, although more of an effort to complete, will be an extremely striking design feature.

The easiest way to incorporate the styles of classic artists into your home murals would be to look to the abstract expressionists. The likes of Jackson Pollock or Ian Davenport, a British artist whose technique involves letting thick lines of paint drip down a vertical canvas, could provide a major statement to the walls of your home. As IdeelArt note about abstract expressionism as an interior decor influence, it can be “interacted purely according to [its] aesthetic value”, and can be used as a touchpoint for how you decide to design the rest of your room or even your entire home.

Decorate your walls with your favourite paintings

Of course, whilst a full scale wall mural makes a striking statement, it may not be the right design choice for the walls of your home, whether for financial or space reasons. As such, choosing the right poster, print, or painting might be an easier—but equally effective—method of dictating the direction of your decor.

It may seem difficult to conceive of how art can be the basis for your entire room design, but the placement of the work itself can allow for a simple starting point. Find the part of your room which is most likely to draw a visitor’s eye on entrance, and hang your centrepiece artwork there. How you choose to decorate the space from there is entirely dependent on the style of the artwork itself, but the effect will allow the art to accentuate the room, and vice versa.

You could choose to decorate your home’s interior to complement the colour palate of your statement painting, whether that be through how you paint the walls or what style of furniture you decide to bring into the space. Alternatively, the style of the artwork itself could dictate your decor by contrast. If your taste skews towards the bright colours and loud shapes of abstract or pop art, you could offset it with more muted shades in your cushions or rugs.

However you decide to make use of works of art in your interior decoration plans, the most important thing is that the posters or paintings you choose are ones you actually like. Using the art as a jumping-off point will actually help reduce the chances of you purchasing a work for the sake of it, or because it matches something in your room, with little aesthetic value beyond that. Ultimately, any  interior decoration you choose to do should be a reflection of your personal taste in order to create a space in which you are happy to spend your time.