Hello friend and welcome to "The Art of Perfect Pairings", a series that explores creative ways of combining my prints and fine artwork with wall colors, frame styles, gallery layouts, and more. I hope to lend you some creative ideas and inspire you with easily achievable ways to make your home a visually inspiring refuge.
It's fun when you find that one special piece that speaks to you but when it comes to hanging it in your home, it can be challenging to know which location would suit it best, which wall colors it would shine against and what other pieces would compliment it and make it feel right at home.
This series of posts is designed to help you cut through that confusion and give you beautiful, attainable ways of designing with art.
Without further ado...
The theme of #1 is:
Minimalist, Winter, White
This Perfect Pairing is inspired by bright winter mornings, where the sun casts a warm glow over yesterday's snow covered landscape. The world seems almost monochromatic with the trees stripped bare; their skeletal branches on display against a clean, fresh backdrop.
Recreate The Look
Wall Color
It's easy for black and white art and interior design to feel stark and unwelcoming but we're creating a warmer take on the minimalistic style so I recommend a white paint color for the wall that has warm undertones of yellow, cream, or light beige. I chose Benjamin Moore's "Gardenia" (AF-10) for this look. It's described as being "a bright white scented with soft pink undertones". Since the paper tone of the art prints is a bright white, this creamy wall color falls back a bit letting the artwork pop.
Art Prints
The art featured in this collection are all prints based on my original graphite drawings making them affordable, especially if you plan to display them together in a group. Because they were drawn in graphite, they feature a range of light and dark charcoal shades rather than pure black. I love adding a mixture of natural texture and beautiful blending into my drawings which also helps to give them a softer look. Below are my recommendations for how to mat and frame these pieces as well as some ideas on how they could be arranged on a wall.
Shop the look:
Framing & Matting
I chose a thin, birch wood frame to pair with these nature-inspired prints. The overall look is sleek and modern but with a light, natural finish. I can see this looking right at home in a coastal cottage. If you have a more traditional home, try swapping the wood frames for gold. This will achieve the same effect but with a finish that likely matches your interior design better.
In terms of matting, I have a few recommendations for you. Keep the mat color bright white to match the paper tone. The landscape drawings will definitely look best with a mat to help create a nice, visually calming buffer between the busyness of the scenes and the frame edges. It gives your eyes a place to rest and creates a good contrast for the artwork. 2 inches is a good average here, but adjust this to suit your needs. The botanical art prints might not even need a mat! These prints already have a bit of white space around the subject so, depending on how you plan to frame and arrange them, you could get away with framing them mat-less. That being said, if you want them to have a bigger impact on your wall, go ahead and give them a mat so that they can fill a larger frame.
Layout Ideas
You could take the 3 landscape prints and display them vertically in a line on a narrow wall. This is great for transitional spaces that often are awkward to style. Areas of your house where this could apply: walls that connect the living room to the kitchens in an open concept great room or in a bathroom above the toilet/bathtub.
You could also display them horizontally down a hallway, over a sofa, or over a bed.
This layout is great for large square spaces and is an interesting alternative to a singular, large art piece. For it to work, you'll need to make sure that the horizontal and vertical frames' heights match. The 2 vertical frames should be the exact same dimensions and so should the 2 horizontal ones. You'll also want to make sure that the art is arranged on the wall so that the gaps between all of the frames is exactly the same on all sides (ie: 3 inches between the top and bottom row and 3 inches between the left and right pieces). Depending on the frames you want and the print sizes that you purchase, you might need to do some calculations to determine whether you need custom mats cut. Have no fear! If that seems overwhelming, your local framer can help you with all of this. Just show them this picture and they will help you pull it all together.
This layout is my personal favorite because I love designing with sets of 3 and I love symmetry in my home decor. You can recreate this look by making sure the square Nautilus Shell print in the center is larger than the vertical pinecone and acorn prints on either side. I beefed it up further by adding a 2-3 inch mat around just the middle print to create a greater size contrast. Like I mentioned earlier, all of the prints in this collection come in a variety of sizes so you should be able to scale this layout larger or smaller to fit your space. This look would be ideal for an entryway, or above a desk or dresser.
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