Design Inspiration

How To: Style a Feature Wall

Feature walls are making a comeback in 2022 and selecting the right piece of art is a great way to incorporate this statement-making trend into the home. 

If your space is feeling stale or in need of a shake up, a feature wall can do the trick. Also known as a statement or accent wall, a feature wall is distinguished from the rest of the room with contrasting paint, wallpaper, or a material finish such as wood or brick. Whatever your approach, art is a surefire way to transform your wall from a backdrop to a focal point. Art can even be used to define the feature wall in the first place—no finicky wallpaper or complicated finishes necessary. Ultimately, a feature wall can bring texture and variety to a room, while providing the perfect display for your personal art collection. Here are our tips for elevating feature walls with original works of art. 

Go for Oversized Art

To make your feature wall big and bold, opt for oversized artwork. Though the dimensions may be daunting, oversized art is versatile—a statement piece is ideal for any space with an overall minimalist design, but it can also function as a focal point within an otherwise eclectic, maximalist interior. Oversized art is particularly ideal for central areas such as living rooms and entryways, or any spacious rooms with high ceilings. With outsized works like Kenny Nguyen’s tapestries, which can even be installed in a custom format, you can transform a blank wall into a richly textured and personalized tableau. For a sleek look, select a black-and-white photograph that provides impact with modern flair. And if you’re hesitant to paint or put down wallpaper, statement artwork is also an easy way to establish a feature wall in one step.

Curate a Salon Wall

If you’re looking to define a room and showcase your diverse art collection, a salon wall can accomplish both. With roots in the seventeenth-century Royal Academy salon exhibitions in Paris, where walls were densely packed with artworks from floor to ceiling, a salon wall can bring a variety of unexpected artworks together harmoniously. To create an eclectic accent wall, have fun and experiment by dramatically varying artwork sizes, frames, and mediums. For a more uniform look, opt for works in similar frames, formats, and color palettes to make your wall dynamic yet serene. When designing your salon wall, you’ll want to reserve the focal point for the most high impact artwork, or the works with the largest dimensions, with mid-size to smaller artworks occupying the outer portion of the wall. For instance, a dramatic photograph by Miss Aniela can anchor a salon wall, while smaller figure drawings can balance the peripheries. 

Design a Grid Gallery Wall

For fans of symmetry and crisp geometric lines, a grid gallery wall of artworks of equal size can bring calm and order to your space. For the art collector, a grid gallery wall is an opportunity to hone in on one artwork medium: select prints of the same size, or even multiple paintings from the same series, such as “Mila” and “Yolanda” by Maria Iciak, to create a space that’s both balanced and curated. Grid gallery walls are also ideal for a photography collection, which can be framed and matted uniformly to suit your style and space. As for the number of artworks and the size of each mat and frame, that’s up to you and the unique space you’re working with, although for larger spaces you might opt for grids of at least three by three. For smaller walls, or fewer artworks, a diptych or triptych can also draw the eye, turning your accent wall into a focal point. In terms of layout, this approach to feature walls is also easy to design and install: simply hang artworks in a grid with equal spacing in between.  

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