Hospital artwork, hand-painted for patient rooms, corridors and atria

Healthcare artwork guidelines ask for landscapes, water and plant life in patient areas, and warn that complex, chaotic or ambiguous images can raise stress in intensive care, behavioural health and paediatrics ¹. One study committees often quote: among heart-surgery patients in intensive care, abstract art caused more anxiety than no picture at all ². Shortlist with that in mind.

• Choose a horizon or a path to follow, still or gently moving water, daylight rather than dusk, and colours that stay light under clinical lighting.
• Leave out stormy or night skies, deep shadow, jagged forms, abstracts whose shapes could turn into faces or wounds for a medicated patient, animals staring out of the canvas ², and anything sad, graphic or political ¹.
• Look twice at very busy florals, fog so dense the subject disappears, and strong reds in clinical rooms.

Start with calming and peaceful works, or go straight to landscapes and seascapes.

A patient spends most of the day half-reclined with the headwall of outlets and call buttons behind them, so the hotel position over the bed is the one wall they cannot see. Plan the piece for the facing wall, or the side wall nearest the window when the television takes the foot wall, and test the sight line from the bed in the mock-up room.

• A way in. A path, river or shoreline leading into the picture gives a reclining patient somewhere to rest the eye.
• Size for the distance. Two or three metres from the pillow, around 81 × 61 cm (32 × 24 in) reads clearly; in shared bays, two smaller pieces give every bed a view.
• Room for equipment. Leave space for monitors, hoists and the patient whiteboard.
• Lighter works behind glazing. A dark canvas behind glass turns into a mirror for the window.

For a first shortlist, browse bedroom works in green or blue.

Familiar local and regional scenery is one of the subjects healthcare art guidelines recommend ¹, and it does two jobs: a patient sees a place they know, and a visitor remembers "the floor with the harbour paintings" the next day. Photographs by staff or local photographers often mean more to the community than any catalogue subject.

Send each photograph at the largest size you have, say which wall it is for, and whether it should be a faithful view or simplified into the calmer manner of the rest of the programme: fewer people, a softer sky, the cranes left out. You approve the composition at the first stage, and a view can grow into a varied series for a corridor. Please make sure the photographs are yours or licensed for this use. More on paintings from your own image.

Signs carry the directions; the art makes the route easier to remember, without competing with the signs.

• Colour by floor. If level 3 is signed in blue and level 4 in green, the corridor paintings carry the same colour, recoloured from one family to the paint codes or the signage drawing you send.
• One family per corridor. A catalogue work varied into related originals, so a long run reads as one place without repeating. Our corridor series page covers sizes, spacing and numbering for installers.
• Landmarks at decision points. One larger, distinctive piece facing the lift doors or at a junction, such as a blue window open onto the sea or a field of yellow poppies, gives people a phrase to use: "turn left at the poppies".

Keep landmark subjects clearly different from floor to floor, and hang them a little apart from the signs.

A hospital art committee often brings together clinical leads, facilities, infection prevention and patient representatives, sometimes with an art consultant, and meets on its own calendar. Give them a pack they can settle in one sitting.

1. The shortlist. Send floor plans or wall photos and your subject rules; we reply with catalogue works for each position, two or three options where the committee wants a choice, with codes, sizes and room photos.
2. The adjustments. A lighter sky, a figure painted out, the floor's colour: we confirm each change before painting.
3. The mock-up room. One painting under the room's own lighting answers questions no screen can.
4. The stage photos. Every canvas is photographed at each stage, so the committee, or the member it delegates, sees each painting before it ships.

File the approved photographs with their codes: they become the artwork reference library guidelines recommend for keeping later phases and other sites consistent ¹.

Repeat sizes

Two or three standard sizes across patient rooms and corridors keep the framing simple and each piece's price down.

Ship rolled

The cheapest and quickest way to send a few hundred canvases to one framer.

Families

Varied series from a few catalogue works keep every room different without designing each painting from scratch.

Volume

Volume pricing from 10 pieces, counted across every floor and wing.

Where to spend

The atrium, the main waiting areas and one landmark per floor.

We price every line of the schedule separately, so the committee sees where a smaller size or a different finish keeps the programme on budget. Pieces funded by donors or a hospital foundation can be quoted on their own.

Healthcare art consultants keep the client, the curation and the committee presentations; we paint the originals to your brief, send the stage photos to you and ship to your framer or installer. The art consultants page explains how that runs day to day.

Outpatient centres and clinics are mostly waiting and consulting rooms: twenty to sixty pieces, often one order and one delivery. Hospices, rehabilitation and long-stay units are closer to a home than a ward: recognisable landscapes and local scenes, chosen with residents in mind, as on our senior living page.