How To Renovate

EP57 Designing With Art: How to Let Art Lead Your Interiors

• Tash South

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In this episode I talk about art adds personality, depth, and soul to your home, and how it can be a powerful guiding force when planning your interiors too. 

I unpack how to plan for art early on in your renovation—from considering sight lines and lighting, to using art to influence colour palettes, textures and floor plans.

We’ll also cover how to add sentimental pieces, and how to find something unique that doesn’t break the bank. And at the end there are some quick tips on how to place and hang art confidently in your home. 

I hope this episode will inspire you to bring more joy, story, and soul into your space—through art that truly reflects you.

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Hi I'm your host, Tash South I'm an Interior Designer and Renovation Consultant.
Each episode of How To Renovate is short, but brimming with practical advice to help you manage your renovation project with confidence and success.

Grab some more renovation advice & free resources and become part of the South Place Studio Renovation Community at
https://www.southplacestudio.com/freebies

Everything I teach about renovation falls within my Five Pillar Process for A Successful Renovation, to learn more about the process, head to
https://www.southplacestudio.com/pillars


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Tash South:

Hello, hello everybody, tash here and welcome back to this episode of the how to Renovate podcast. So today we are talking about designing with art and how to let your art lead your interiors. So I really think that art gives a home that personality, that soul, that depth. It really is something that reflects the personalities of the people who live there. Because art is so subjective, I know that me and my husband, rich, we constantly cannot agree on what we love, so actually, at the moment we've just put everything up. You'll see, behind me here is a photograph that he loves of, um, some solar panels in kind of a mountain shape, by a photographer called Andreas Gursky, and I'm not so keen on it, but we've put it up. We're seeing how it fits there. We might change it. Um, there are some other photographs from the same photographer that I actually love that we have elsewhere around the house, but I think art is just so subjective. But you know it's your home, and so I do think that you need to have things up on the walls that reflect who you are, that you love looking at, that makes you smile, that makes you feel something. So I thought I'd do this episode on art and how that kind of blends into our interiors and our homes. So let's get into the episode, everybody, okay.

Tash South:

So let's move on to number one, why your art shouldn't be an afterthought when you're planning your home design. So I think so many people focus on getting their renovation right, getting their home right, and then placing the art afterwards. That can also work, but I think a much more kind of rich and interesting way to do it is actually if you have a few pieces of art that really make you feel something that you really love, because then you can actually use those as a tool to kind of start forming your interior around, because art, kind of it tells a story, it evokes a feeling and it can really set the tone for what you could want to base your home interior design around. It could really guide your interiors and really provide a really great focal point and starting point for what you want to do in your home. So I think that's quite exciting and I think that's why maybe people shouldn't think about it as an afterthought. If you think about it at the start, it can actually influence what your home will look like and even what your home will feel like, because if you plan for it at the start, during your planning phase, and you know you want to have one or two spectacular pieces in your home. It could actually influence loads of things in your home design.

Tash South:

So let's start with sight lines. Perhaps it's a piece where you walk into your home and you want to immediately see that piece. That is called a sight line so you can plan for where to put that piece. If you already have it, you can plan for it on your floor plan, you can mark it out so that you know that wherever you want to put that piece, you need to make sure that the wall is big enough or, if you have mouldings on the wall, that the mouldings will frame the artwork properly. If there's lighting, you want to make sure that piece is lit properly by proper directional spotlight. That's specifically for artwork placed onto the ceiling and directed onto the artwork. So you can see how, if you know which pieces you want to include in your home, how that can influence quite a lot of things, not only the colour palettes and textures in the home, but actually the structure, like the sizes of the wall. The electrics stage, as with everything else I say everything comes into planning stage will actually give you the opportunity to really showcase a few pieces properly, with a proper lighting, the proper sight lines, the proper focal point.

Tash South:

Okay, so let's move on to number two. So now let's talk about curating art that means something to you. So curating is quite a fancy word, isn't it? It's just really about gathering pieces that mean something to you. You know, you don't need to go to galleries and have a gigantic budget, you just need to have that connection with a piece.

Tash South:

There's some great places you can find artwork. I often find little paintings in charity shops that people have. You know, amateur painters have done, they've experimented, they've perhaps tested a few things, they've done a few paintings and then donated it to charity. I found a couple of really great little pieces that way prints. I love prints because I was a graphic designer for many years and so that kind of graphic, printed, bold look I absolutely love. And if you've seen my own artwork pieces that I sell on my website, you'll see that that those pieces are influenced by that kind of graphic design background where it's really clean, really simple, simple shapes but actually quite intricate in what you see when you look at them a little bit more closely.

Tash South:

So if you just figure out what you love, what works for you, what makes you feel something, what you appreciate. Just have a look around. Vintage markets are great as well, car boot sales there's just so much out there that you can explore. And then photography is a great one as well. Like I mentioned before, there are some incredible photographers out there and they can even be free, and I'll link to some of these in the show notes. But if you go to some museum sites or some art gallery sites, they actually provide high resolution, free digital pdfs that you can download and print yourself on their website. So I'll link to those I can find in the show notes and you can actually download those. And then you'll have the printing cost, of course, and the framing cost. But you can frame quite economically.

Tash South:

You can select loads of pieces that you love, that speak to you, and use them throughout the home. You can use it as a gallery wall, you can use a single piece as a large print, just kind of experiment with, with what you love and how you love to display the artwork, so it doesn't have to cost thousands. You can curate and you can gather what you love and you can use it in your home to express yourself and your personality. So I would just say, when you're choosing, choose something that means something to you, or perhaps choose something that reflects your heritage or that reflects your family's history or something that's happened in your family before or place that you visited with your family before. Those are all lovely ways to. When you walk around the home and you see those artworks or those prints, it kind of takes you back and it reignites those memories. I don't know if I'm remembering this correctly, but I do remember reading an article once about how people who have art in their home, and particularly photographs of family, are actually just generally happier people. So there's an even better reason to put some artwork and some photographs into your home. And what I absolutely love about art as well is just, there are no rules. It can be anything, and I do do this in my own home as well.

Tash South:

If the kids have done something, perhaps it's pencil drawing or something really creative or funny that they've drawn, perhaps it's a portrait of me and my husband, just framing that and putting it up in the house just makes us smile every time we walk past it. And then even things like dried flowers, picking up some beautiful dried leaves, some autumn leaves that catch our eye. That's a beautiful colour. So when I'm walking around with the kids and we're picking up a leaf, perhaps my daughters will say, oh, this one looks like a love heart, this one looks like a dinosaur. We'll kind of pick them up and then I'll place them in a glass frame and we'll just have them up on the shelf. Just tiny little pieces on the shelf Just add so much personality, so much character, and then also brings you back to that day of spending time with them doing that activity.

Tash South:

I've even used trays before, so serving trays. I have a gorgeous serving tray, really quirky, quite an unusual shape, very long, rectangular tray. If you're watching on YouTube, I've put a picture of it here. So it's a quirky print on the tray and I picked this up at a museum shop when we were in Venice in Italy and it just really grabbed my attention and instead of using it as a tray, I just prop it up on a shelf and use it as artwork. So it doesn't even have to be artwork that you're using as artwork. It could be anything that you find interesting or pretty or beautiful or makes you smile. So I would just say experiment, just go for it and put out the things that make you smile, that make you happy, because it's going to make your home feel more welcoming and more personality filled and more just like yours.

Tash South:

Okay, so moving on to number three styling and hanging your art with confidence. So I find that I quite like to be quite relaxed with where I put things, which I've talked about, how just placing little frames here and there. But if you have larger pieces, you do want to think about carefully how to place them in a room, because they will be a focal point and if they're not hung quite properly, then it it can disturb the feeling of the room. So just a few tips here on how to hang your artwork. So here are some gentle rules, let's call them.

Tash South:

So if you have a large piece, it's great to place the centre of the artwork, so not the top or the bottom of the frame, the actual centre of the artwork, at about 145 centimetres from the floor. So that generally is the eye line for the average height of person. So that works really well and when you're looking at it you might think it's a little bit lower than you would usually hang it, but I find that's the mistake loads of people make is they actually hang their artwork just a little bit too high. I think it's great to have pieces just slightly lower than you think you should hang them, because I think it just works with the eyeline and also it just makes you appreciate it more when you can see into the centre of the artwork rather than looking at the bottom of the frame. And again, if you're working with larger pieces and you want to centre it above a bed or above a sofa, the general rule of thumb is to have the artwork roughly two-thirds of the size of the width of the sofa or the bed and then just centre that on your sofa or on your bed and that just gives a really lovely scale. So the two elements speak to one another the artwork and the sofa or the artwork and the bed. That kind of ratio works really well with a large piece, but also I would say that works for larger artwork.

Tash South:

But play around with it. I love playing with scale. I love walking into a hallway, perhaps, and just in the corner or next to a mirror, it's just one single tiny little piece that really draws you in. Perhaps it's a painting, perhaps it's a print, perhaps it's text, and so just think about these little moments where you could draw someone's attention in and either make them smile or make them think about something or provide a different perspective on something. So I love playing with a scale of artwork as well.

Tash South:

And then just to end off, grouping artwork is still really popular. I don't know if you remember, but their gallery wars were such a huge thing a few years ago and they still really are. I still see gallery wars a lot, but I but I prefer to think about them as grouping, so maybe a bit less informal feeling, where the grouping of the artwork perhaps have different frames, a different mixture of prints or artwork within the frames, but that still kind of speak to one another and work together as a grouping. So I think that's a really lovely way to display artwork as well. And then when you're thinking about framing also, I love choosing frames that work both with the artwork but also with it the wider interior of the room. So I would say, when you're choosing frames, if you're having pieces professionally reframed, then you know, go in and speak to them, ask their advice about what they think would work with the artwork itself that you're taking in to be reframed. Take an image of the room with you or your mood board or your style board, and so you can have a wider vision of what that frame will look like in the space. But also, I love just finding that perfect frame that just suits the actual artwork really, really well, also because I think that almost adds to the artwork, makes it more interesting and more impactful. So that brings us to the end of this episode, everybody. I really hope you enjoyed it and I hope that it inspires you to bring some art into your home, whatever it may be. I will see you in the next episode. I hope you have the most amazing week. I'll see you next week, everyone. It's bye for now.

Tash South:

For more information on my five pillar process for successful renovation, you can go directly to southplacestudiocom forward slash pillars, where you'll find an introduction to the process, which covers each of the pillars and what they cover. We also have a number of other free renovation resources. Go now to southplacestudiocom forward slash freebies. I have created some amazing freebies for you there. There is one on the process, like we just said. There is one on planning permission. There is one on kitchen design. There is another one on lighting planning. Go and check those out. There's so much free information there to help you with your renovation.