Starting a Room with Art (& A few Favorite Pairings)

This post is sponsored by Artfully Walls.

The task of designing, renovating, and DIYing a whole house can be daunting. Even when I’ve tried to narrow it down to one room, it’s been hard to pull the trigger on the perfect bedframe, the just-right dining table, or the couch on which we’re finally going to kick up our feet. (Jordan, we miss you AND your couch!) — But choosing the art is exciting for me. And, sometimes, it’s just the inspiration I need to visualize a paint color... new flooring? ...furnishings! Accents! So my advice: start with what excites you. 

Directly off of Greta’s room is a small bathroom that’s just perfect for her. She’s our oldest daughter, so we like that she gets a little more privacy. And since Greta’s room will double as a guest room when company comes, we like that this bedroom gets its own bath. The bathroom itself is...decent. Really cute beadboard, a fun dresser turned vanity, the shower is huge and incredible. The yellow walls and laminate floors (and a few other accent pieces like mirrors and lighting) all could easily be swapped--but I just wasn't sure where I wanted to go with it. 

(Sidenote: yellow bathrooms with no natural light are a true challenge to photograph!)

Before making any other design decisions, I started by finding inspiration through art. Artfully Walls is one of our favorite art-buying sites. I’m constantly turned on to new artists when browsing this site, and I love that it’s a cost-effective way to support those artists. I can heart my favorites and it automatically saves them so anytime I need art, I go there first to see what I'm loving. 

For this room, I loved “Braid” by GG (a Canadian author and illustrator whose focus is on storytelling and quiet moments) and “Butter with Caramel Rainbow” by Emily Keating Snyder (a Los Angeles-based mixed media artist driven by a love of color). The two together felt playful and young for our 9 year old, but still something I love and admire.

If you can, I highly recommend splurging on the framing option. This helps me to hang the pieces as soon as they arrive (they even come with hanging hardware!)— no waiting around while I hunt for the perfect bargain frame or stall as I make other decisions for the room. These are ready to go up!

I chose the 16x16” print for “Braid” in the Black Gold Reverse Wood “Ornate” frame. “Butter with Caramel Rainbow” looks great in 24x24” with a white mat and the Gold Double Bead Wood “Ornate” frame.

This pairing really got my creative wheels turning, and I had so much fun shopping the site and put together some other fun duos for you: prints that I love looking at alongside one another and that I could easily see living happily ever after on the same wall in multiple different rooms.

1. La espera BY FEMKE COLARIS
2. Flowers with Green Background BY KATE LEWIS
3. The Big Leap BY CARRIE SHRYOCK
4. Grrr! BY PENNY MIN FERGUSON
5. Butter with Caramel Rainbow BY EMILY KEATING SNYDER
6. Braid BY GG
7. Mountain Moon BY MATTHEW KORBEL-BOWERS
8. Her Face Launched A Thousand Ships BY JANET HILL
9. Dune Path BY PHILINE VAN DER VEGTE
10. Untitled BY PAVEL FEINSTEIN

If you aren't confident in creating your own pairings, you can check out the recently relaunched wall designer tool on Artfully Walls. It looks much chicer than the previous version, is more fun to use, and has some new features, like…

• an interactive tool for browsing, grouping, and shopping for art
• a revamped GUI and simple “drag and drop” functionality for a fun, easy experience 
• easy-change framing styles and matting options
• lots of wall paint colors to play around with
• discovery functionality to find similar works 
• tools for Interior designers (export itemized art grouping proposal to PDF — with or without pricing — which can be easily shared with customers)