Paintings for the Living Room

What a living room wall actually takes

Start with the wall, not with the painting. Measure the free width above the sofa, then take two thirds to three quarters of it as the width of the canvas. A piece narrower than half the sofa looks lost, and it is the most common mistake in living room wall art. Hang the centre of the image 57 to 60 inches from the floor, unless the sofa back is high, in which case leave a hand's width of wall between the furniture and the bottom of the frame.

Then decide between one large canvas and a gallery wall of smaller framed pieces. One large horizontal piece is quieter and easier to get right. A gallery wall of three or four smaller canvases gives you more to look at but needs a consistent frame and even spacing to avoid looking like a noticeboard. If you want to build an art wall rather than hang one canvas, order the pieces in the same size and the same frame model and hang them with the same gap between each one. The full living room wall art collection is on the grid above this text, and the notes below are there to narrow it down.

Landscapes, the default for this room

Landscape painting is the depiction in painting of natural scenery such as mountains, valleys, rivers, trees and forests, especially where the main subject is a wide view with its elements arranged into a coherent composition. Sky is almost always included, and weather is often part of the composition. That description is also a description of what a living room needs: a wide view, a horizon, and room for the eye to move.

The Hay Wain, originally titled Landscape: Noon, was completed by John Constable in 1821 and shows a rural scene on the River Stour between the English counties of Suffolk and Essex. It hangs in the National Gallery in London and is regarded as Constable's most famous image and one of the most popular English paintings. Green, water, a cart, a tree line: it is the reason half the country hangs a landscape in the front room.

For a bigger, more theatrical version of the same idea, Among the Sierra Nevada Mountains, California by Albert Bierstadt is the one to look at. Bierstadt was a German-American artist best known for monumental landscapes that glorified the American West, and this is a canvas that is happy at a large size. The Oxbow by Thomas Cole does the same for the Connecticut valley on a slightly smaller, greener scale.

Before you order a living room painting

What size painting should I hang above a sofa? Two thirds to three quarters of the sofa width, with the centre of the image 57 to 60 inches from the floor. Measure the wall before you choose the canvas.

Are these living room paintings for sale hand-painted, or prints? Yes. Each one is painted in oil on canvas by a studio artist, and you approve a photograph of the finished piece before it ships. We are not selling prints here, and we print nothing.

Can I order a set for a gallery wall? Yes. Order the canvases in the same size and the same frame model and they will hang as a set. Three pieces in a row is the arrangement that works most often in a living room.