One of my favorite things to do is stage houses with gallery art (shocker, I know!). I get so giddy over this and thankfully I get to work with a number of artists who are local - you already know about our partnership with the Frank Gallery, but we’ve found a few other amazing artists to work with too!
What most people don’t know is that I actually have no idea what art the artists will be bringing for each house. They just drop off what they have and I put it where it needs to go. After years of doing this, I have a lot of experience and knowledge around how to best hang art in your home - including how to utilize colors, where to place it, and more!
I offer in-home consultations for people that want help with this, but I also wanted to share a few tips with y’all so you can do it yourself too, using the art we staged a recent listing with: 721 Jones Ferry Road.
Number one, one of the most important things is to have a fantastic first impression, right? So, that starts at the front door. You come in the front door, what is it that you see immediately?
For this home, I had to think long and hard about what are you going to see when you first walk in the door and make sure that we add the right pops of color without it being too overwhelming or without it taking away from the rest of the house.
These particular pieces are by a new artist I discovered: Ashley Coggins. These are actually photographs of plants, if you can believe it or not. And their luscious colors (with green present in both works) were the perfect, balanced way to invite people into this home.
This house, in particular, is a complete work of art, so you don't want to take away from it at all. Its gorgeous modernism means it has a very sleek design. We don't have any trim, there are clean lines that you want to maintain, and the house itself is very monochromatic - so a lot of black and white.
This is amazing as far as a modern aesthetic goes, but if you leave a house completely monochromatic, it can feel alienating and a little cold. So what I wanted to do was bring in enough color to give some warmth, depth and texture to the house without taking away from the modernist aesthetic.
That’s where these pieces by Scott Horner came in! Their color and size were perfect to warm up this otherwise black and sleek kitchen.
The other thing that is difficult, but really important when hanging art in any space, is to get the scale just right.
This is a very dramatic house with enormous walls - including 10 and 12 foot ceilings - so we needed to get the scale of the pieces right! If I had hung a piece in the living room (pictured above) that was too small, it would have looked weird; almost dwarfed by the vastness of the walls.
On the contrary, if we had gone bigger, it would have made a completely different statement than what we have here. I didn't want something that was going to take away from the rest of what you see because the fact of the matter is the architecture and bones of this house are really the showstopper of the whole thing.
You want to accentuate what is there while also adding color, texture, and depth. And that’s where this other piece by Scott Horner came in. It was just right for this space! Can you imagine what this room would look like if that wall was blank? It’s a totally different feeling.
One other thing that's really important is where you hang art on the wall. A lot of people hang art way too high and when you do that, there's something that just feels off about it.
And maybe if you're a really tall man, you might feel like the piece pictured above is too low, but tough nuts, buddy. I'm average height. And, and this is just right. You can enjoy it straight-on, without having to tilt your head back to see it (something you definitely don’t want in your house!).
I find that the best way to ensure you’ve hung your art at the right height is to examine it from all different angles. AND you also want to take into consideration anything else in the room that’s on the wall (TVs, fireplaces, etc.), because you don’t want the art to feel off-kilter compared to what’s already there.
This gorgeous piece is another by Ashley Coggins, and I just loved the colors for this empty space!
Lastly, another thing I love to do is hang art in bathrooms. You might be thinking, the bathroom? That's not a place to put art. But here's the thing… We all spend time in the bathroom, and you end up looking at a mirror and washing your hands anyway, so may as well brighten it up a little where you can!
I've honestly been shocked by how art in a bathroom will actually make the place feel somewhat dignified, not to mention bring color and light to what is typically a pretty small and/or dark area. So I am all about it!
This beautiful piece is by Shelly Hehenberger - a longtime artist at the Frank Gallery and one of the first artists that I ever started working with when staging with art! For this bathroom, all we needed was a little bit of color and I think this piece is pretty perfect in here.
