How to decorate your walls with taste and sophistication

Our home, like any space, speaks to us in its own way and stirs emotions in us. The atmosphere inside it also reflects our personality to others. Sometimes, though, the feelings our home conveys don't match our character or what we'd really like to express. Worse still, we don't feel at ease when we're in it.

More often than not, the problem comes down to interiors that are too cold and anonymous, lacking personality and character. In this respect, wall decoration is absolutely crucial, because it is one of the foundations on which the design of the whole home rests.

Despite this, walls are sometimes simply painted a white that "goes with everything", without much thought, and if it isn't used wisely it can create a flat, dull or even gloomy mood. It's then easy to be gripped by an irresistible urge for change, ending up with lots of ideas for transforming our rooms but no clear sense of how to carry them out properly.

A wall, in this sense, is a space entirely at our disposal, to be decorated with our own creativity and given our personal touch and character. In this article we'll give you plenty of ideas on how to stage your own revolution: adding colour, creating fresh visual impact and bringing new emotions into your home, with suggestions for modern prints you can buy directly online from our gallery.

1. Decorating your walls with colour

One quick, high-impact way to shake up our rooms is to turn to colour, either by repainting the walls or by using wallpaper. For a particularly refined effect, one option is to colour just a single wall or a small area, such as the section of wall above the kitchen table.

In these cases, it's worth remembering that white, even if it may have drained the life out of our home, is still a colour that conveys order, cleanliness, brightness and calm. What's more, it enhances space, making every room feel larger. A particularly elegant and sophisticated trick for bringing a room to life without losing brightness is to keep white, or another neutral colour, as the dominant tone and use a second, more vibrant shade on small objects or sections of wall, which are thus thrown into relief.

All in all, let's always be careful not to get carried away: use colour wisely, keeping in mind the style of the rest of your décor so as to maintain an overall harmony throughout the home.

2. Refreshing your interiors with posters, pictures and art prints

Repainting your walls can be a long, expensive job and, above all, it isn't ideal for temporary situations, such as living in rented accommodation.

Alternatively, you can easily achieve a similar refresh by using modern wall art: decorative pieces with a strong visual message that, if chosen carefully, you'll never tire of. Decorating your walls with carefully chosen images also lets you create a wonderfully elegant "art gallery" effect.

When arranging pictures on your walls, it's best to follow a few clear rules that help create an overall harmony in the final composition. For an extra touch of originality, one idea is to lean your prints against the wall on the floor rather than hanging them: as well as creating a very distinctive arrangement, this emphasises the height of the walls and the empty space in the room, making it feel larger.

Below, we share some ideas and suggestions on the type of pictures to use for different needs.

2.1 Creating an elegant, modern style

To give your home a modern, sophisticated feel, nothing beats black and white prints, like some of the images we suggest below.

2.2 Romantic styles and intimate atmospheres

Very much in fashion right now are Shabby Chic interiors and Provençal-style interiors, which evoke a sense of calm and tranquillity combined with a particularly feminine elegance and refinement.

To add a touch of romance to our rooms, we can use romantic prints like the ones we suggest below.

2.3 Bringing a room to life with colour

A cold or gloomy room can quickly be transformed with colourful or brightly toned pictures that bring back movement and energy, like the images we suggest here.

2.4 A window onto the outside world

To refresh a cramped room that feels confining, or one that seems deeply empty because of large bare walls, you can easily open it up with landscape posters, like the ones we suggest below.

3. Filling the space with furniture and accessories

To decorate a room that feels too bare, we can turn to classic furnishings, such as shelves, which we can fill with vases and books, or a wall unit. It's important to consider the other furniture in the home and especially in the room, because the styles of the various pieces should always be coordinated, and you should avoid overfilling the space.

A very original and particularly fashionable solution is to hang empty frames, with no picture inside and no backing board, in an unusual shape or a vibrant colour, which decorate the wall while preserving the empty space and brightness of the room.

Alternatively, you could paint the wall with chalkboard paint, or put up a chalkboard sticker, letting you give free rein to your creativity and change the look of your wall quickly and easily.

4. Hanging unusual objects

Another popular trend today is to decorate walls with objects originally intended for other purposes. For example, plates (typically in the kitchen), musical instruments such as guitars or flutes, items of clothing and accessories (hats, walking sticks, buttons, bags), but also signs, cutlery, fabric hearts, CDs, bicycles, coat hooks and any other object you can think of. Let your imagination run wild, while always keeping your choices in harmony with the style of the whole home.

5. Wall stickers and stencils

Last but not least, we couldn't fail to mention wall stickers and stencils.

The former are extra-large decals that can cover an entire wall. You can use landscape images or cityscape pictures and prints, or, for a more personal touch, make a photo collage linked to an important event, photos of friends or family members, or even funny photos, such as a collection of candid or out-of-focus shots.

As for stencilling, it's a technique that lets you create wall designs relatively easily, by dabbing colour on with a sponge through a template fixed to the wall which, once removed, reveals the pattern.

If you enjoyed this article, share it with your contacts on social media. Remember that you can buy canvas prints of all the images we've shown you from our gallery.

If you'd like to ask us something specific, get in touch and we'll get back to you!