Thursday, November 19, 2009

Accessorizing Your Walls - Bringing It Together

BHG.com

Random art placement… A little wreath here, a little picture there, a little shelf on the next wall, all sort of randomly placed. We've all seen it and I think we’ve probably all done it at one point or another in our lives. Sometimes it happens because we may not know another way to do it, but in some cases there is also a perception that every wall has to have something on it and we don’t have enough accessories, so just scattering it around so there’s a little something everywhere seems the obvious choice.

Just to ease your mind and help you make more effective use of your art - Every wall does not have to be filled. In fact, it’s better if they’re not all full because the eye needs a place to rest in the room too.

Walls less than 3 feet wide really don’t need to be accessorized. Not saying that they can’t be, just saying it’s not necessary, so maybe you could use the art from that wall to help towards more effectively accessorizing a larger wall.

via House of Turquoise Photographer Eric Roth

In this Fireplace Accessorizing - Using What You Have post, we talked about choosing a spot to accessorize and completing it before moving on to anything else, even if it means stealing from other areas and leaving them bare. I still think that’s the way to go. It will look much better to have one spot completely accessorized (correctly) than many walls a fraction done.

We’ve talked before in this post about repeating items to make a dramatic statement (just an aside here – if you have a set or group of art it’s always much more effective to keep it together than breaking up the set throughout the house) . You can also use this same idea of grouping to pull together a variety of things you have scattered on walls throughout the house. I've seen items like those in the photo below placed randomly, separately on walls. How much more effective to pull them together in a grouping as they did above this buffet.

Country Living Photo Michael Luppino


To help you more effectively organize and hang your groupings or any other art, here are some resources.

How To Easily Hang a Collection of Art Pieces On The First Try by Southern Living


Hanging Art: Tips From Experts from BHG.com

Hanging Art Tips from Stellers Gallery


Tracy did a post on hanging collections here.

How to Securely Hang Heavy Objects at doityourself.com

Hanging Heavy Objects From Walls at BHG.com

There's been a fair amount of blog buzz about these invisible plate hangers at DISChangers.com.

I haven't used these before but Blair mentioned them in a comment recently so I thought I would include them so you can check them out. MonkeyHook Heavy Duty Wall Hanger.

I know that some of you have art that is just too small and you're wishing it were larger. In the next post, we'll talk about some possiblities to help you with that problem.

Have a great day!