How Your Favorite Work of Art Can Guide Your Room Design

If you’re an art lover, chances are good that you also care a lot about the statement your home makes to others. If you’ve collected artwork that holds deep meaning or evokes great positive emotion, consider using one of your favorites to influence your interior decorating. A great designer will help you determine what you love most about a work of art and how to use those elements in your room decor. Check out some examples below and you may just get inspired to do your own artistic makeover!

Using Color: Monet’s Waterlilies and Japanese Bridge

Many people love the work of Claude Monet because of his use of the restful colors of nature. At first glance, Waterlilies and Japanese Bridge looks like it relies solely on green to capture the scene. Look more closely, though, and you’ll see that Monet’s brushstrokes carefully blend many shades, including kelly greens and deep forest greens. Look even closer, and you’ll notice that there are also yellow leaves, blue flowers and just a touch of warm brown in the corners.

Using the colors of a great painting can be instructive in design. Going for a room in shades of green would miss all of the depth that Monet created in his work. A yellow-green couch would be stunning as a centerpiece against more neutral walls, and choose the yellows and blues for accessories. Wooden tables could reflect the warm brown tones, and accent items like rugs or pillows could leverage the blue of the wisteria. Looking closely at the balance of all the colors in a painting can lead you to an amazing new interior design.

Using Texture: Seurat’s A Sunday on La Grand Jatte

In addition to color, the texture of a painting also adds an important element to its overall feel and look. Georges Seurat took this to the extreme in his masterwork A Sunday on La Grand Jatte by introducing the world to pointillism, the process of using tiny dots of color to create a whole painting. The result is a soft, fuzzy texture that is as important as the colors themselves.

When looking at your favorite painting, consider emulating its texture in your room. In this case, a soft and bumpy chenille fabric can re-create the texture of all those dots on upholstery or throw pillows. For a more direct approach, punched tin accents, hammered copper table tops or punched paper lampshades could also be used to great effect. Thinking about texture adds depth and dimension to your overall design for a polished, professional look.

Using Line: Van Gogh’s Starry Night

Though Starry Night is also an excellent example of the masterful use of color and texture, many art lovers are drawn to its use of line above all. Van Gogh’s swirls and concentric circles create a sense of motion that draws the viewer’s eye from the base of the tree, across the sky and finally to the crescent moon.

To emulate this feeling, you can choose fabrics that incorporate large, swirling patterns that re-create the rhythms of Van Gogh’s lines or try choosing a strikingly tall floor lamp, vase or potted plant to acknowledge the cypress tree that punctuates the scene. Additionally, custom wall treatments, window treatments or rugs can use swirl like characteristics to visually guide the eye into the room. To ensure the most sophisticated result, try to avoid direct translations of your artwork such as featuring the exact image onto a throw pillow.

There are so many ways to appreciate your favorite pieces of art. So, if you’re ready to dive into a room makeover based on your own favorite piece, consider hiring a designer to help you uncover your favorite elements of a painting and how to make the most of it in your room’s decor. As with any creative process, the possibilities are unlimited!