Your Master Class in Canvas Printing

There’s a fundamental rule about the world we live in: Everything looks easy right up until you try your hand at it. That goes for preparing your own taxes, building a treehouse for the kids, or figuring out the best way to use canvas printing to decorate your home.

At first glance interior design seem pretty straightforward: Choose some things you like (colour, furniture, wall art) and put them into a room. And then you wind up with an ugly, clashing room that is crammed full of wonderful things that don’t play well with each other, and you realise just how hard design is – and decorating your walls skilfully is one of the most difficult aspects of the concept. Here are three Master Class ideas that will instantly give you control over your wall art, and give you the basics to transforming your room into something beautiful.

Canvas Printing Rule: Size Matters

Many people, when just starting off with canvas prints, get a bunch of pieces in exactly the same medium-range size, and hang them on the walls like in a museum. There’s nothing wrong with this approach, and if you have a firm design vision surrounding these prints, you’re fine. But interior design is a flexible tool, and to truly master it you should be thinking bigger – or smaller.

Varying the size of the art in your room adds dimension and interest – and tying the size of your wall art to both the subject being depicted and the furniture in the room will make everything pop. Consider groups of pictures as components of a larger installation: Larger pieces get emphasis, smaller pieces are grace notes, and together they form a powerful whole.

Using Architecture

Residential properties are creative objects – they were designed, in their most basic form, by an architect. Even if your home is part of a development where the houses are very similar there are going to be oddities: Those bonus rooms no one knows what to do with, an odd roof line, and the character that creeps into a house as it settles and gets some weathering.

The key to effective use of canvas printing is to use these architectural oddities to your advantage. There are many places where art can improve and superpower your home:

• Niches: These display features in hallways and rooms can puzzle homeowners – but they are ideal spots for a pop of powerful visuals.
• Windowless Rooms: Bonus rooms that lack windows (and thus can’t be bedrooms) cry out for light and colour, and art can give them both.
• Bulkheads: These ugly boxes covering pipes and wires in a room can be an eyesore – but they’re perfect for displaying a cohesive group of canvas prints.

Using Colour Thoughtfully

Colour can be overwhelming. Neophyte designers get lost in thinking that every surface and area of space in a room has to have a definite colour. The Master Class approach, however, reminds you that a lack of colour can be just as powerful. In rooms where colour is lacking, a print with a strong colour palette can pop off the walls. In rooms where there’s already a lot of colour, consider going black-and-white, grayscale, or with art that’s been muted with a fade effect or other filter. It’s all about the contrast.

In the end, design is personal – and if you love the way your rooms turned out, that’s all that matters. But these three advanced techniques will make your use of art as decoration much more powerful. When you’ve got your design plan in hand, click here to send us your images, and we’ll handle turning them into the perfect wall art.