Large wall art in Bahrain: a size guide from majlis to penthouse

Two rules of thumb sit behind every row: over furniture, about two-thirds the width of the sofa, bed or sideboard below; on a free wall, about half the clear width. Many villas have more than one reception room, such as the separate majlis, ladies’ living area and family lounge of one furnished villa advertised in 2025, so each gets its own line.

Any of our some 1,300 designs can be painted at these sizes. When the shape changes, the composition is redrawn for the new proportions rather than stretched. You can also have your own image painted to fit the wall.

Many Bahraini houses have more than one majlis: one East Riffa villa lists four. Built as a street-side annex, it is one storey, up to 4 m high from the pavement in garden-villa zones and no higher than the house’s ground-floor ceiling in Private Residential Area B; a 4 m annex leaves an inside ceiling of roughly 3.2–3.5 m. The room is long rather than tall, so the painting should be too: 80–120 cm high keeps clear air above it.

Size it from the seating. One majlis furniture maker writing for Gulf clients plans a room for 24 guests at about 9 × 11 m, with 4.2 m of host seating facing the entrance; two-thirds of that run is a canvas of about 280 cm (110 in), or three 90 cm panels with 5 cm gaps. Guests see the wall seated, so hang it 25–35 cm above the backrest, and lower over floor cushions. One Gulf design firm’s majlis guidance uses a single-colour palette so that one statement piece stands out, and many households keep people and animals out of this room, choosing calligraphy, geometry, abstraction or landscape instead. More in Bahraini villas and the majlis.

Glass is everywhere in newer Bahraini villas. A Hamala villa shown in a 2023 video tour with more than 7,000 views has floor-to-ceiling glass in every room, and one design firm’s guide to Bahraini villas describes high ceilings, large windows and rooms arranged around a courtyard or garden. The art then goes on fewer walls: one solid panel in the living room, one in the dining room, and the stair.

Measure that panel, not the room. Leave 30–40 cm of plain wall beside each window frame and take the largest width that remains: on a 3 m panel, that is a canvas of about 220 cm (87 in). Tape the outline on the wall and look at it from the sofa and from the door before you order, and keep the canvas off walls that take the afternoon sun.

Three storeys inside 13 m leave room for floors of a little over 4 m each, so a stair from the entrance hall to the first floor can face a wall 6–8 m high, often the first one guests see. A single tall canvas suits a straight stair seen from the front door; a stacked pair or trio suits a stair that turns, with each panel lined up with a landing.

Penthouses bring the same wall indoors. Manama listings include a 350 m² duplex penthouse in Sanabis, and the Onyx tower in Bahrain Bay launched in 2022 with penthouses of 220–850 m², duplexes and a three-floor unit among them. Where the stair rises through two floors, plan a vertical of 200–250 cm; a single-level penthouse takes a horizontal of 150–200 cm (59–79 in) on the living wall instead. Browse tall vertical works.

A one-bedroom in Bahrain Bay can be about 90 m², and at Bahrain Financial Harbour the Harbour Heights tower alone holds 437 apartments. With glass on the view side, the living room usually has one solid wall, often 3.5–5 m long, which a canvas of 120–160 cm fills without crowding the sofa.

Designers in Manama treat that wall as the focal point. In a 1,937 sq ft apartment at the Four Seasons Private Residences, Bahrain Bay, the Bahrain-based designer Mohamed Alqari kept circulation “clean and gallery-like” and hung a single black work in the living room. See horizontal works and art for living rooms.

Bahrain passed 24,000 hotel rooms in about 140 hotels in 2026, with 12 more five-star properties to come, and many new openings carry residences. Hilton Bahrain City Centre in Seef was due to open with 594 studios, suites and penthouses, each with a full kitchen, and Kempinski’s tower at Bahrain Harbour was planned with 74 rooms and 186 residences. Most hotel art here is therefore a repeat order: one size for each room type, painted in one hand, after a sample is approved.

Public spaces work at another scale. The airport’s stained-glass Concordia measures 34 by 17 m, and Bank ABC set a 5.4 m sculpture in front of its Manama headquarters; beside commissions like these, a lobby canvas under 2 m looks lost. The buyers and their briefs are on Bahrain hotels and restaurants and Bahrain offices and institutions.