Neon Wall Art

Neon Wall Art

Most neon imagery began life as a sign, and signs were built to be read from a moving car, which means they were built wide. Lettering runs horizontally, tubing loops sideways, and the glow spreads out rather than up, so a landscape format usually keeps the subject whole and the composition breathing. Tall shapes are not off the table, but they suit a particular sort of subject: the vertical blade sign bolted to a hotel front, a stacked word, a single symbol such as an arrow or a heart with dark space above and below it.

Dark grounds are the second thing to plan for. Glow only reads as glow when there is darkness around it, so most of these images are largely black, and a large dark picture is a heavy object in a pale room. It behaves rather like a window at night: a hole in the wall rather than a decorative panel. In a bright, white, daylight-heavy room that effect weakens badly and the piece can look merely dim.

Restraint in colour count separates the good ones from the rest. One or two hues against black look like real tubing bent by somebody who knew what they were doing; five or six look like a screensaver. Pink with cyan, red with amber, plain white on black — the limited combinations keep some of the original craft in them.

Rooms that take it well are the ones already run at low light: a games room, a bar corner, a home cinema, a teenager's room, a basement. It also suits a windowless space that needs an event on the wall, since it never depended on daylight to make sense in the first place.

Judge one with the lights on, not off. Everybody views these images on a bright screen in a dim room, which is the most flattering condition possible. The honest test is how it looks at midday with the curtains open, because that is when the illusion of light is weakest and the piece has to stand up as a picture instead.