If you’re not a professional decorator or designer, you may feel stymied by the idea of decorating your space.
There’s a lot that goes into making a house a home, and the options can be overwhelming. The good news? You don’t need a decorator to tell you about you — the places you love, the colors that invigorate you, and the energy with which you want to fill your home.
One of the simplest and most fool-proof ways to infuse a space with personality is with beautiful wall photography art. If the idea of curating a cohesive collection of art you love and that reflects your personal style still sounds intimidating, here are four super-easy ideas to get your creative juices flowing.
1. Create a Gallery Wall
Gallery walls are a trendy and timeless way to dress up your bare walls and add life to your home — and there are so many ways to do them. Whether you opt to stick to a certain color palette, like black and white, or a specific design element or theme, like a collection of single stems from different plants, your gallery wall can be as unique as you are while complementing and tying together your space in a beautiful and creative way.
Over couches, crawling up staircases, and across hallway walls are all popular places to display galleries. But don’t overlook the less expected opportunities in your space. For instance, giving your home office a splash of creativity-inducing art or showing off your unique interests in your guest bathroom are underutilized design tactics that can tie your entire space together.
2. Dress Up a Neutral Palette
Neutrals are in. White walls, white couches, white crown molding — you get the picture. If you have a neutrals-based clean slate to work with, you can bring energy into your home with colorful accessories. From throw pillows to wall art, you can choose to create calm with blue hues and oceans, or manifest your love of travel with pictures of Italian beaches, New York cityscapes, or European castles.
Neutrally colored spaces are convenient to decorate, as you can dress them up with colors that evoke emotion. The choices are endless. Instead of having to build your color palette around a mustard couch or some blue-tinted walls, a white couch cover and a little paint can open up a whole new world of opportunities. From calm and sparse to vintage and eclectic, you no longer have to choose art that fits into a specific color palette.
3. Bring the Outdoors Indoors
Live in a big city? If you do, you’re very much not alone. With nearly 80 percent of the country living in urban areas, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, city life can feel cramped. As such, make your space an oasis away from the hustle and bustle and, instead, bring the peace and calm of nature into your city apartment with beautiful landscapes and botanicals.
Whether you’re looking for energizing green ferns or calming and sprawling western prairies, you’ll never be far from a breath of fresh air with art that reminds you of life outside the city limits. And don’t think that because you’re bringing the outdoors inside that your art has to be busy and overwhelming. In fact, the graphic-like lines of the desert complement minimalist designs just as well as forests add interest and texture.
4. Infuse Your Living Space with a Hometown Feel
Most of us end up moving away from our hometowns to chase careers, loved ones, or just change. You may be thousands of miles away from the place you grew up, but where you came from will always be a part of your unique identity. As such, highlight your distinctive path to the city you’re in now by decorating your space with photography that reminds you of your hometown or state. Whether you’re missing the beach, the mountains, or the city skyline, infuse your living space with art depicting the place that made you the person that you are today.
5. Show Off Your Hobbies
It doesn’t get much more “you” than the things you do. If you love to cook, surf, travel, bike, sail, or any number of other things, showcase your passions on your walls. Artful themed photography can create dynamic spaces that simultaneously bring your home to life with the things that bring you to life. Not to mention the built-in conversation starter it’ll provide when you have company over!
