Adding personality and depth to your home with art is powerful, but combining and contrasting different style feels intimidating. What’s your formula for combining abstract prints with classic portraits or bold contemporary pieces with vintage landscapes without freakin’ out? The solution is balance, cohesion, and thinking through your space. Here’s your go to guide for making art styles blend together for a blended look.
1. Start with a Cohesive Theme
While it’s tempting to dive right into the mix, put a blanket theme on your pieces first. This could be a shared color palette, subject matter or overall feel, something he calls ‘mood’. For example, if you’re attempting to create a calm, relaxing space, make sure the artwork itself is calm and relaxing, even if the styles are different.
Example: Combine an abstract pastel painting with a simple botanical print and a soft watercolor landscape.
All done through a cohesive theme, so that the pieces compliment each other, even though their style is different.
2. Use Color to Create Unity
Anchoring art styles with a shared color palette is one of the simplest ways to mix art styles, there are very few hard rules when mixing them. Even if the styles are all different, look for pieces that have very similar hues or tones.
Pro Tip: Guiding your choices with a dominant color and using it in many styles. For instance, a bright cobalt blue might happen in a modern abstract painting, a traditional oil portrait, as a geometric print etc.
It creates visual continuity with room for each piece to shine in its own way.
3. Play with Proportions and Scale
Combining different art style can be achieved by variety of the art work by size and scale enabled us to get the whole balanced and intentional look. Pair large statement pieces with small intricately detailed works to provide interest to your display.
How-To: You can hang a loud, oversized abstract piece with a series of small vintage illustrations or photographs. By layering these contrasting sizes you’ll add depth to your wall and make your arrangement feel cohesive.
4. Frame Choices Matter
Another overlooked element in the art styling game are the frames. But frames help hold different styles all together. You can either keep all of your pieces unified with the same frame or go with an eclectic vibe and embrace diversity.
For a Cohesive Look: If you’re not using frames in the same color or material (sleek black, natural wood, or brushed metal) the warmer the better.
For an Eclectic Look: Decide to mix frame styles, as long as there is at least one element they share like similar matting or frame width.
The effect of frames is to provide a visual boundary that can split different art styles without playing continuously.
5. Arrange with Intention
The way you display your artwork will greatly influence how well the styles will mesh. If you’ve arranged items into a curated arrangement, you’ve thought through the placement of each piece.
Gallery Wall: Organic or grid layout mix in different styles. For a rich, layered effect, include a mix of abstract, modern, vintage, and photographic works.
Linear Display: Put pieces in line along a shelf or picture rail. Because of this linear arrangement, even different styles have the feeling of order.
Statement Pairing: A bold contemporary print combine with a classic portrait makes for a stunning focal point.
6. Balance Bold and Subtle
To balance a bold or eye catching piece, you'll look for something a bit more linear, a bit more understated. That way, no one style dominates the space.
Example: Dramatic abstract canvas can be lightened with delicate line art or muted photography.
You balance bold and subtle elements to ensure harmony in your art display.
7. Incorporate Different Mediums
You don’t need to just paint or print it. As your arrangement includes different mediums, for example sculptures, woven textiles or metalwork, this will also help you to enhance them with texture and dimension.
Tip: For a large abstract painting, combine it with a macramé wall hanging, for example, or a framed vintage poster with a small ceramic sculpture.
This one keeps your display interesting and dynamic.
8. Trust Your Intuition
Guidelines are good, but the secret to mixing art styles is your own tastes. If a mix feels right for you, then do it. Your house needs to reflect you. Art is a means of doing that and it should be reflective of your personality and feel authentic to you.
Pro Tip: Don’t overthink it. Try different arrangements and move pieces around until you feel like you’ve stumbled upon something you like.
9. Test Before You Commit
Lay out your pieces on the floor before hanging anything, to see how they’ll look before you put holes in the wall. By that, you can change the setting and adjust without beating holes into the wall.
Paper templates taped on the wall of your room can also help you test out spacing and placement before committing yourself to a final arrangement.
Final Thoughts
An art by itself, this is an art form of mixing and matching art styles. By considering what is important to you, how you want to feel, what you would like to inspire in others, and what message you’d like to portray, you can then choose your themes for living room , colors, balance, and intention to create a visually stunning and harmonious display, that does not only bring your walls to life, but also all those who walk through it. That way it is important for the key fact that your creativity should be in focus and then you adhere to your style.
Ready to transform your space? You too can start curating your art collection right away and watch the magic of mixing styles come to life in your house!