Pictures in the living room above the sofa: what are and how to choose?

The living room is the most public place in the house. The whole family gathers in it for hanging out. Friends are welcome in this room. The situation in such a room should be welcoming, set up in a positive way. Furniture in the room and decor should contribute to creating the right atmosphere in the room. To give the living room coziness and beauty, painting objects are used. Pictures placed in the living room above the sofa can decorate this room.

Even the darkest room can be made immediately brighter and more attractive if you hang a picture on the wall in the room. Thanks to such decor items, harmony and proportion can be maintained. When choosing a picture for the living room, a number of features should be considered.

• In order not to bring disharmony into the premises, one should not hang paintings of different styles on the walls. To create harmony it is better to hang works of art in the same style or theme on the wall.
• Place pictures on wallpaper, plaster or paint. It is important that the wall surface has a light tone, and on the wallpaper and other surfaces there should not be a bright, catchy pattern.
• For the frame use frames that are suitable in tone to the color of the furniture

Oil paintings will decorate any room. They look especially beautiful in the living room. The most successful place to place them will be a sofa, they can also be hung above the fireplace. In the modern interior, various paintings will be relevant, but more often still life or abstraction is hung in the living room. Meanwhile, other types will look good in this room if they are selected in accordance with the chosen style and taking into account the color palette in the room.

In the living room above the sofa watercolors successfully fit. For rooms decorated in country style, Provence and shabby chic, paintings depicting rural landscapes, still lifes and plants will be a good find. For retro style or pop art more often choose paintings painted with acrylic paint. Canvases painted with acrylic are more suitable for connoisseurs of retro or pop art styles.

For hi-tech or loft styles, posters or photo illustrations in metal frames are more suitable. Paintings painted in watercolor will help to emphasize the provincial decor, so they should be chosen for rooms in a rustic style.

The room will organically look like one canvas, and a whole gallery of paintings of different sizes and types. In addition, in the living room you can often see modular paintings. These images, which are a single picture, divided into several paintings, allow you to transform the room. Such modular canvases are divided into diptych, triptych or polyptych. That is, the composition may have two, three or more segments.

Complex modular compositions are positioned in a certain way:

• in small rooms hang the composition in one horizontal line;
• to add height, the segments are hung in the form of a vertical strip;
• in a puzzle way;
• chaotically.

To make the room seem visually spacious, brighter and more comfortable, it is important to choose the right color and furniture, as well as decorative elements.

Proper placement of the canvas over the sofa will highlight this area.

• Large paintings will help visually hide the small size of the room. At the same time, works of art of a small size will be inappropriate and simply “lost”.
• For low rooms use one or more vertical paintings placed above the sofa.
• Cloths hung horizontally will visually make the room wider.

The image on the canvas also plays a role. Medium-sized paintings will not affect the geometry of the living room. Large canvases or large images visually reduce the volume of objects in the interior.

The size of the paintings should ideally be combined with the dimensions of the living room, as well as with the furniture dimensions. For urban apartments, medium-sized canvases are more suitable. In rooms with high ceilings, vertical compositions will be appropriate. In this case, it is worth choosing paintings not square, but rectangular.

When choosing this decor for the living room, it is important to choose the right proportion. The following rules must be considered:

• the most suitable parameters are considered to be modular paintings, the size of which does not exceed 2/3 of the size of the sofa;
• in a small living room, a picture up to 50 cm in size will harmoniously look; compositions from several paintings up to 30 cm high will also look good;
• the presence of bulky paintings requires a lot of space around, so it is advisable to hang them in spacious rooms;
• in a small room miniature compositions will be appropriate;
• in rooms with low ceilings, it is worth hanging compositions whose images are drawn vertically;
• large images that are laid horizontally will visually expand the room.

The choice of plot is also very important, there should not be any inconsistency in the living room. All images should be in the same style. You should not purchase paintings of various styles, even if they really liked.

Choosing these works of art, take into account the style of the room. If you have chosen a country style or Provence for your living room, you should pay attention to scenes depicting flowers, landscapes, mills, etc.

In the modern direction of decor, photographs with various themes are used. It can be flowers, landscapes, animals, celebrities, and city views. The main thing is that all this looks harmonious and fits into the overall design concept.

The wall above the sofa can be a great place for family photos of different sizes and themes. You can create a family photo gallery. Printed family photos will remind you of a pleasant time spent with friends and family. To make such photos look organic, it is better to put them in the same frames and hang them over the sofa.

A large photograph depicting a favorite movie hero or a frame from a movie you like will look very unusual above the sofa. The picture in black and white looks very unusual in the living room, emphasizing the style of the room. Thin aluminum frames will make the paintings seem more mysterious and mysterious.

To highlight the area above the sofa, use photo wallpaper. Designers recommend choosing images in soothing colors, without bright patterns.

When choosing paintings for the living room, it is important to consider not only the size of the picture, but also what feelings it causes. If you are not quite pleased to contemplate the picture, it is better not to acquire it, otherwise its presence may lead to a lack of energy and vitality. Stories depicting military operations or any conflicts should also be avoided, otherwise it can introduce dissonance in the way of life.

Do not hang portraits of long dead people over a sofa indoors, because in Feng Shui such images carry a negative energy.

According to chinese teaching in this room you should hang neutral stories. For example, with images of nature, still lifes, flowers, etc.

In the event that the paintings will be located on the north side of the living room, in the “water zone”, it is better to choose paintings depicting water landscapes. On the south side, it is better to hang posters depicting fire. If the sofa is on the east side, it is better to hang a canvas with a picture of a money tree or fish. This zone is able to attract money to the house.

Usually the wall behind the sofa immediately attracts attention, because this zone is located in the center of the room. Visitors will immediately pay close attention to the large canvas, painted in oil. The canvas, painted with oil paints, is itself self-sufficient, so a different decor here will be out of place.

You can hang artwork in a selected area in one line if they are of equal size. The main thing is that the frames of the paintings are the same, and the picture itself has a similar plot. The color palette is also important, it should be the same or similar on the presented canvases.

If the canvases are of different sizes, it is important to hang them correctly. So, the largest picture is hung in the center, the rest of the images are hung in an orderly manner, at their discretion.

For living rooms decorated in a classic style, a canvas painted in oil is more suitable.

Watercolors or pastels will look no less spectacular. Thanks to such works, the room visually becomes less cluttered. These paintings fit perfectly into the overall style of the living room.

Using the area behind the sofa to place the picture, you can instantly transform the room. Other decor items will help to make it cozier. Small shelves behind the sofa, with paintings, books or souvenirs, are also suitable for this.

To draw attention to the paintings, it is worth providing good lighting. Spotlights will allow not only to focus on the canvas, but also to make the room optically brighter and more spacious.

The triptych is a picture with a single storyline, divided into several segments. For many, this option can be a great design. It is easy to make a triptych on your own. Segments of square shape, the same size, will help optically make the narrow living room more spacious.

Unusual images will add cheerfulness to the interior.

Roughnesses and flaws on the surface will help to hide bright canvases, they focus on bright colors.

Dark walls brighten with contrasting color paintings.

A small picture above the sofa will make the room more comfortable.

See how to hang a modular picture in the next video.