Corporate artwork painted by hand, from reception to the boardroom

Office art goes wrong when it states the values: a summit for ambition, a rowing crew for teamwork. Visitors read those as decoration. Pick the two or three qualities a client should feel in the first minute, then the manner of painting that carries them.

Established

Plaster relief and knife-laid paint in stone, umber and charcoal: textured works.

Precise

Hard-edged geometric abstracts in navy, slate and white, the backbone of most law firm artwork.

Rooted

The landscape or skyline the firm grew up in, from the catalogue or from your own photographs.

Discreet

Wabi-Sabi and minimalist works in sand and grey, for private-client floors.

Inventive

Colourful and uplifting work for agencies and technology brands.

Most firms need two registers: composed on the client floor, livelier where the team works. Settle that split first.

Most receptions have two walls that matter: the company name behind the desk, and the wall a visitor faces from the sofa. Give the name its own wall; on the waiting wall, a painting sets the tone of the meeting before anyone arrives to collect the guest.

Size the canvas to the wall: roughly two-thirds the width of the sofa or console beneath it, or one tall piece filling most of a narrow wall. Every piece is painted for its order, so it can be two metres wide or more, with the composition redrawn for the new proportions. Deep relief travels stretched or framed, so plan it as a boxed delivery.

A law firm or a bank usually wants an abstract nobody needs to explain; a creative agency may prefer one memorable image, such as a single animal on a dark ground. Dressing the shared lobby of a multi-tenant building? See art for commercial landlords, or browse reception art.

The wall opposite the boardroom screen is the most-seen wall in the building, mostly at the size of a laptop tile.

• Low contrast. Hard black-and-white and saturated red pull the eye from faces; sand, stone, blue-grey and sage sit behind skin tones quietly.
• No fine stripes. Close parallel lines can shimmer on a compressed video stream; broad shapes and soft washes stay still.
• No faces behind heads. A painted figure behind the chair upstages the person sitting in it.
• The whole canvas in shot. Send a screenshot from the room camera with your wall photo, and we suggest a size and hanging height that sit the painting between the speakers.
• A quiet edge. Canvas hangs without glass, so nothing reflects the ceiling lights; choose frameless, or a slim black or wood frame.

Give the statement piece to the long side wall, which everyone at the table sees and the camera mostly misses. Browse boardroom artwork.

One family. For six or twelve similar rooms, choose one or two catalogue works and ask for the Vary route: a related series in the same palette and hand, so no room repeats and the floor reads as one decision.

A painting for each name. Many firms name rooms after their office cities, a local river or the founding partners. The painting then becomes the room sign: the skyline in the New York room, the bridge in the Thames room. Some cities are already in the catalogue as cityscapes; any other is painted from your own photographs. One manner and one palette across the set keeps twelve subjects looking like a collection.

In a four-person room, a piece 80 to 100 cm wide is usually enough; a side wall keeps it out of the video frame.

Artwork painted all over in the logo colour reads as signage. Schemes that last take the brand's neutrals and secondary palette as the body of the painting and use the main colour once: a line, a block, a glint at the edge. That restraint is also what lets the art outlive a rebrand. The Recolour route repaints any catalogue work to what you send: the wall paint codes, a carpet tile or a veneer sample photographed in daylight. Check the stage photographs against the physical sample, not the brand PDF, while the colour can still be adjusted on the easel.

Your own logo, monogram or brand pattern can also be painted as an artwork, worked into an abstract or carried through a corridor series: see painting from your own image.

These are the pieces visitors ask about: a founder's portrait for the boardroom, the first premises painted from an old black-and-white print, the skyline from the terrace, a building the firm designed, financed or built. Faded or small photographs are fine; you approve the drawing, then the colour, before the work moves on.

Choose how faithful it should be: loose like the Impressionist works, or closely observed like the Hyperrealism collection. A portrait the firm already owns can be copied by hand for a second office, with the rights holder's permission if it is still in copyright. Start at paintings from your own image.

Designers and architects

Specify by catalogue code on the FF&E or art schedule, with size, colourway and finish on each line. Each catalogue page lists the style, colours, orientation and sizes already painted, so the line survives value engineering. The practice can follow the stage photos and file them at handover.

Fit-out contractors

Order against the practice's schedule, with delivery to site or to the contractor's store.

Procurement and facilities

Send the codes, sizes and approvals with your purchase order; one wall or forty, the process is the same.

Art consultants

A consultant running your programme can buy through us directly: see art consultants.

Dated corporate commissions are usually single pieces: a retiring partner's favourite view, a client's headquarters for a deal closing or an anniversary, the skyline of a city where the firm is opening. Events and productions need short runs: canvases for a gala stage, a launch, or a film or photo set that must look right on the shoot day.

Say who must approve and when they are travelling, because a commission from a photograph starts with a drawing for approval. Order it framed if it is to be presented the day it arrives, or frameless if it moves between venues. Give us the recipient's address at order stage: we ship to them directly and confirm the cost before dispatch.