Nature Wall Art

Nature Wall Art: Room by Room

These images earn their place in rooms with no view. Interior bathrooms, box rooms, basements, hallways and any wall facing a fence or a neighbouring building all benefit, because a landscape stands in for the window that is not there. Where it works less well is the room people expect — a lounge with tall windows onto a garden, where a printed woodland competes with a real one and loses.

Depth is the quality to look for. A picture with a clear foreground, middle distance and far horizon behaves like a view; a flat wall of foliage behaves like wallpaper. In a small room that difference is the whole point, and it is worth passing over a prettier image for one with more distance in it.

Palette should follow the room's temperature. Green-heavy forest scenes go slightly sour against warm yellow walls and look excellent against white, grey and pale wood. Autumn and moorland colours do the reverse. Hold the image up beside your paint in daylight rather than trusting a memory of the shade.

Humidity is a fair reason to think twice about a bathroom, even though it is the room this subject suits best. A wall that runs with condensation after every shower is hard on anything hung on it, so favour the wall furthest from the shower and make sure the room actually vents.

For a windowless room, one trick is worth the effort: match the direction of the light in the picture to the direction of the light in the room. If your lamp or your door is on the left, choose an image lit from the left. It sounds fussy, and it is the difference between a picture on a wall and something that reads, at the corner of your eye, like an opening.