Parisian apartment wall art and paintings for every French home

The Haussmann buildings of Paris, put up between 1853 and 1870, set their ceilings by rank: 3.50–3.80 m on the ground floor, 3.20 m on the second-floor étage noble, 2.80–3.00 m above it and about 2.60 m in the old service rooms at the top. The Paris architect Teresa Lombardo's 2026 guide gives the same steps, down to 2.20–2.30 m in attic rooms, and modern blocks are usually built at about 2.50 m a level. Start from your floor:

Measure from the underside of the cornice, not the ceiling: Haussmann cornices are often deep. Inches and hanging heights are in the France size guide, and the wider picture in our France wall art guide.

A Haussmann salon is built around a marble fireplace in the centre of its main wall, nearly always with a mirrored trumeau above it, so the painting goes elsewhere. A 225 m² Haussmann apartment in Paris 17e, designed by Agathe Convert, shows the usual answer: one painting behind the sofa, another in a corner, and only a ceramic on the mantel. Hang the main canvas opposite the windows, where daylight falls on it, and give the panels beside the fireplace a pair.

Many salons are no longer separate rooms: in Lombardo's own 2023–2025 renovations, nearly two-thirds took out the doors between salon and dining room to make a double réception. The décor magazine Maison et Vie reports that many French interior architects now prefer one large work to a cluster of small frames, and on that longer wall a horizontal of 150–200 cm or a panoramic canvas holds the wall where six small frames would scatter. Subjects and palettes are on the France styles page.

A dining wall is seen sitting down, two to four metres away, with a sideboard taking its lowest metre, so one painting at eye level does more than a wall of frames: a horizontal of 120–160 cm above the sideboard, or about 100 × 150 cm on the end wall. Where the dining room has joined the salon, give the two walls one palette.

Warm colours suit the table. SeLoger's décor desk names clay red, powder pink, ochre, caramel and carmine as the 2026 tones taking over from beige. A still life or a loose floral in those tones sits as easily with mahogany as with pale oak; more on art for dining rooms.

In a Haussmann plan the bedrooms sit on the quiet courtyard side and often get less daylight; a dark flat near Parc Monceau, featured in May 2026, was given light, lively colours to move the light through it. Over the bed, choose a canvas about two-thirds the bed's width (100–110 cm for a 160 cm bed), hung 20–30 cm above the headboard.

The rival on the headboard wall is wallpaper: a feature on an avenue de Courcelles apartment listed eight decorating ideas, among them a panoramic wallpaper behind the bed, and not one painting. A panoramic canvas of about 150 × 50 cm or 230 × 75 cm does the same job, and it comes with you when you move. See art for bedrooms.

With its double doors open, a Haussmann enfilade gives a view of 15 to 20 metres through the reception rooms. The wall that closes it is the place for a tall vertical, about 150–180 cm under a 3.20 m ceiling, with a colour or shape that still reads from the far end. The long corridor to the bedrooms works the same way: its side walls, passed at arm's length, take a row of small verticals or nothing, while the end wall, seen straight on, takes one piece of 100–150 cm.

Corridors can carry more: the 17e apartment above hangs a set of Warhol Marilyns in the passage to the bedrooms. An entrance hall follows the same rule, with one vertical canvas facing the front door.

Most French owners live in a house: houses make up 56% of main residences and average 116 m², and four owner-occupiers in five live in one. Farmhouses and mas often have beams, lower ceilings and deep window reveals, so measure the clear wall under the beam, give the main wall a horizontal or square piece, and keep the tall vertical for a stair hall or a converted barn.

Take the palette from the house. Provençal prints carry olive, lavender, madder red and indigo, while toile de Jouy sets a single colour on a light ground; a landscape or loose floral in those tones belongs with the curtains. In a chalet, pale winter landscapes and textured whites sit well against timber. Furnishing a whole house? See art for villas and whole houses.

French homes rarely start from bare walls. Of the French who own an artwork or a reproduction, 15% inherited their first piece; of those who have bought art, 26% have bought at a brocante, beside 39% directly from an artist and 32% in a gallery. A canvas made to order can join that mix: a companion in the palette of a gilt-framed portrait, or a landscape framed in gold to hang beside a brocante find.

You can also have your own subject painted: the house in the Luberon, the view from a Paris balcony, a family crest. Send the photograph with the wall size and we suggest the size and finish; you need to own the image or have permission to use it, and the design can stay exclusive to you if you ask before we start. More on paintings from your own image.

We suggest a size and a shortlist from some 1,300 designs, or design a piece for your room and budget, and you can order one canvas first. You see your own painting in photographs or video at every stage, and the next stage starts only when you say yes.

Then choose how it travels. FedEx Express in France takes parcels up to 274 cm long, so a larger canvas goes rolled or by freight. Rolled is the lightest and most economical way for any large piece, and an encadreur near you can stretch it; stretched or framed arrives ready to hang, and heavily textured work always travels that way. We arrange the shipping on the best route to your address and confirm its cost before dispatch. Furnishing for a client? See art for residential interior designers.

Each canvas can travel stretched and ready to hang, framed, or rolled; a rolled canvas, the lightest and most economical way to send a large painting, arrives without stretcher bars, and any local framer can stretch it for you.