Room decoration with art prints is an interesting exercise! You can approach color selection from complimentary side or play along with established accent color. But how to deal with difference in light?

Let’s set a design experiment: medium size room with normal 9 feet high ceiling. There is a bed in the middle and a large window looking out South-West. There is an empty wall between two doors. I want to put my art prints there :)

Despite light color of the wall paint rear wall looks dark in afternoon or even most of the day if windows have shades or covered with drapes. Light and small art will be lost out there.

Here is an example of a dark and high contrast print with very bright expressive light strokes. Red and orange continue general wall color hue and violet and pink work as a color accent. These prints can be framed or not depending on a budget but this is not essential. What is most interesting is that overall dark art works perfectly well with bright color of the wall paint! You always need to look not only at the wall but at a whole room with its dark ceiling corners and think about 24 hour day cycle.

The light is different each hour and it depends on weather. If your wall is perfectly white it will look from yellowish to pink, from greenish to light blue during rainy or morning hours. Same is true about white in a painting or a print.

Black surface of the aluminum prints is very reflective. It acts as a mirror. It means that you will see windows with outdoor views and bright chandelier or lamp looking on a print under the angle. You won’t see just black. You will see a refection of your room.

In general if you have pink, purple and blue on a print colors will look more saturated and warm in afternoon. What day of the year do you feel on this photo? What time of the day? I think it was winter afternoon. What do you think?

About this photo

I made this capture in December 2012. It was cold and I was in photo shoot in Toronto downtown south of Bloor. Christmas lights were bright and it felt like holidays. I had to be careful protecting camera from light snow and watching not to slip out. I made a series of shots and they work wall as a combo.