The Keys to DIY Wall Art in Your Interior Design

Everyone approaches interior design in their home from a different angle. For some people, it’s all about getting that ‘fresh from a magazine’ look, and they spend their creative energies finding affordable substitutes for the items and materials they see in those glossy design spreads, complete with affordable canvas prints of abstract art on the walls. For others, it’s about antiques and their personal style expressed through furniture and accessories – sometimes also including funky canvas prints. The main thing to keep in mind is that no approach is wrong (though some approaches to interior design will be more universally appreciated and thus easier to sell when the time comes).

For some, their passion for creative design extends to the walls, where they want to apply some personal artistic creations. As anyone who’s ever watched any ‘real estate porn’ on television knows, treating your walls like a canvas is simultaneously exciting and dangerous, because it’s very easy for DIY art installations to … look DIY. Here are the absolute musts if you’re planning to decorate your walls with your own art as part of your design.

Wall Pictures: Don’t Freehand

The first and most unbendable rule of design club is simple: Unless you’re a trained or accomplished artist, never freehand a picture or painting on the wall. It might seem like the simplest thing in the world to take a pencil and sketch out a design, then fill it in with paint and have an awesome, dramatic moment in your room. But freehand drawing is much more difficult than it looks, and when you add in the additional difficulty of doing so on a vertical, not perfectly smooth surface such as your typical wall, you can very easily end the week by sadly priming over your creation.

If you absolutely must draw on the wall, create a scale version on a smaller canvas first and get it perfect. Then use that as a guide, or have a stencil made of it to trace (http://www.customcutstencil.com/) so your vision is transferred perfectly.

Abstract Art: Never Glue

When looking for inspirations for your wall art, you’ll often see ‘three-dimensional’ concepts where interesting objects are painted and then applied to the wall to jut out into the living space slightly. It can be a powerful effect – but it can also be a shoddy, DIY disaster. If you’re ever tempted to take votive candles, coasters, or other small objects and glue them to your wall in order to create an art installation of sorts as a focal point in the room – hesitate. Glue is notoriously unreliable and you may find yourself constantly repairing your work, and glued-on pieces will look amateurish. Plus, removing them from the wall will no doubt damage the walls severely, meaning that you may be stuck with the artwork longer than you like.

An alternative is to use photos to canvas prints to bring that slight hint of three-dimensions to your art while keeping the actual pieces more abstract as art prints. Canvas prints also bring some texture to the piece, and can easily be swapped out at any time when you grow tired of your last creation.

In the end, it’s your room and you should do as you please, whether it involves baby bottles glued to the walls or elegant cheap canvas prints bringing subtle texture and dimension to the room. Just keep in mind that DIY often looks DIY, and DIY is not a great look. When you’ve contemplated our tips and have a great idea for decorating your wall, click here and we’ll make sure your canvas prints look fantastic!