You have purchased all your dream furniture and have your living room organized in the perfect layout, but how in the world do you design the wall behind the sofa?
This is an excellent question and I'm so glad you asked! Most living room layouts tend to have the sofa against the largest wall in the room and for a good reason. The sofa is typically the largest piece of furniture in the room and having it live against a large wall helps with the scale and proportion of the space. This often leads to confusion on how to style the wall. Do you put up a massive mirror? Do you create a wall gallery? Do you leave it open and save that project for another day? Any of these questions could be answered, yes, but I want to walk you through some of my favorite wall-styling options with some super helpful design tips!
Asymmetrical Gallery
This is one of my favorite options. I love an asymmetrical gallery wall because it adds a unique balance to the space without using the obvious decision of centering everything on the sofa. Asymmetrical wall galleries are great in adding interest, weight, and overall, a really fun artistic look to the space. To add another unique quality to the design, play with picture frame spacing. Having different spacing between the frames gives the design a unique human touch without feeling "perfect." In the design above, I balanced out the gallery wall with a lounge chair, a large plant, and a floor lamp that takes up some wall space. I feel like this is key. The lamp is tall and connects the ceiling space to the low furniture, while the lounge chair visually balances out the wall art. This wall design is a great solution, but you have to remember that it needs to be paired with some accents to balance it out.
Design Tip: The more variety you have in frame size and finish, the more your gallery feels like a statement piece and will be noticed by your guests.
Centered Gallery
Centered gallery walls are the usual "go-to" when it comes to adding art above a large furniture piece. This particular gallery has three different-sized frames that help create a unique look that adds variety, while still maintaining a focal point in the room. In this design, the room still feels balanced because the art is centered in the room, which takes the eye straight to the sofa and art, while the lounge chair on the left and the ottomans on the right, help keep the room feeling comfortable. When doing a centered gallery with three art pieces such as this one, I would keep the distance between the frames equal to avoid looking like there was a mistake.
Design Tip: The fewer frames you have in a gallery wall, the easier unequal spacing looks like a mistake and not a stylistic choice. I would only use unequal spacing when you have 4+ picture frames (refer to Asymmetrical Gallery for example).
Aligned Gallery - 3 Frames
Aligned galleries are great when you have two to three larger pieces of art. For a more centered look, place the largest in the middle with the smaller pieces framing each side. This helps create a nice balanced look in the space while making the space feel well thought out and put together. In this design, the pictures are lowered on the wall to connect more with the furniture. By connecting more with the furniture and less with the ceiling, your eye focuses on the lower part of the space, rather than taking in the true height of the ceiling. This is not a bad thing, but merely a preference of the homeowner/designer.
Design Tip: When having art laid out above your sofa, avoid letting the art expand past the sofa. This will make your art gallery too overpowering and will dominate your space, rather than enhance it.
Aligned Gallery - 2 Frames
This is another great example of an Aligned Gallery but with two large pieces of art. Since these pieces are larger, they are elevated a bit more from the top of the sofa and are centered in the space. This helps create a uniform and comfort in the space by allowing the eye to easily digest the layout. This layout works great in almost every space and you can't really go wrong with this selection!
Design Tip: The more unique the gallery wall layout, the more it becomes a focal point. The simpler and more grid-like the gallery wall is, the more it blends into the space as an accent but not a focal point.
Minimalist
I call this the minimalist because it's exactly that. One large art piece is a bold move and if it's the right art piece, it can be an ABSOLUTE success! I am a huge fan of this because it takes a deep understanding of one's artistic style to make this decision. Typically, the larger the art, the more expensive. For someone to be able to be this in love with a large piece of art is a beautiful sense of internal understanding. With all that being said, this off-centered large piece of art balances the room very much like the Asymmetrical Gallery we talked about previously. The lighter lounge chair visually balances out the large art, with the height of the art and the floor lamp to help connect the furniture to the ceiling.
Design Tip: If you have tall ceilings, the floor-to-ceiling connection is crucial! The connection shows that you are living in ALL the space and not just the floor level. Sometimes, adding tall floor lamps, tall art pieces/large gallery walls, tall bookcases, and even tall indoor plants, can help connect the two. Plus, you paid good money for all that space so you should be able to live in all parts of it!