Decorating your home in blue and light blue and choosing art photos for your walls

As we've often said, the decor we choose for our home or shop has a strong influence on our mood when we're inside: depending on the wall colours, the style, the way we use the space and many other factors we're often not even aware of, we can feel especially welcome and relaxed or thoroughly ill at ease. What's more, the choice of furnishings also reflects our personal taste and the particular feelings that certain colours or styles evoke in us.

Light blue is a colour that conjures up the sky and the sea. It is therefore linked to feelings of space, airiness and calm, enriched by the movement of the sea's waves. If you're thinking of using light blue or blue to decorate your home, in this guide we'll give you lots of tips on how to paint your walls and create harmonious decor with these colours.

We'll also suggest a number of ideas for canvas pictures that you can buy online from our photo gallery to add elegance and originality to your decor.

1. The characteristics of blue and light blue

Blue is one of the three primary colours, together with yellow and red. Using it in interiors has a particularly soothing effect, thanks to its associations with the calm of a clear sky and the restfulness of midnight blue. It's a colour that encourages reflection and concentration, while still keeping a sense of movement thanks to its link with the ever-changing nature of water. In general, it adapts easily to a great many situations and colours, which is why it's so widely used in interior design.

Because of these qualities, its dark shades are perfect in the bedroom, recreating the atmosphere of the night sky and helping you sleep. Alternatively, its lighter version works beautifully in a south-facing living room, where the sunlight lets it shine like a clear summer sky.

Coming back to the theme of water, a very popular use of this colour is in the bathroom: light blue floors, walls, furniture or accessories are perfect for evoking water and cleanliness.

Below are a few suggestions for decorative prints you can use for this purpose.

2. Choosing photos and posters to match blue

If we have walls painted blue, or blue is simply the dominant colour in our decor, we have three options for decorating the walls of our home or shop.

2.1 Using pictures in shades of blue

Following the so-called "tone-on-tone" principle, let's choose posters, pictures or art photos that pick up the dominant colour of our decor. We can use exactly the same shade or, if we'd like to add a little life to the room, a lighter or darker tint that creates a subtle contrast while staying in harmony with the main one. This approach makes it possible to build particularly refined and elegant compositions.

Here are a few art images from our photo gallery that you can use to create this effect. In particular, you'll find several sea prints, the subject of choice for this kind of colour scheme.

2.2 Turning to complementary colours

In some cases, tone-on-tone can become overly monotonous. To get around this, we can choose to use blue's complementary colour, orange, to give the room a strong note of vibrancy. These contrasts can create a very elegant effect, but be careful not to overuse them or to pair shades that don't go well together.

Take a look at our suggestions for painting your home orange.

2.3 Using black and white art photos

If our rooms are already very colourful, the best choice might be to use black and white posters to tone down the colour of the room. The subjects should be chosen to echo the style of the decor or other elements in the room.

Here are a few fine art prints that might be just what you need.

Don't forget that you can buy all the images we've shown you as posters online in our photo gallery. And if you need more specific advice, get in touch and we'll do our best to help!