Wall art size guide for Dutch rooms, from canal house to new build

Sizes are width × height in centimetres, with inches alongside, for the typical Dutch ceilings above. If your wall falls between two rows, use your own measurement: every iHomeArt canvas is painted to the size you give us.

Hotel and office schedules are on hotels and restaurants and offices and institutions.

Dutch décor writers give two-thirds of the sofa's width as the rule, so 150–170 cm over a 240 cm sofa, and a horizontal canvas suits a long sofa because it visually lengthens the wall. The same proportion works elsewhere:

• Corner sofa: take two-thirds of the back you face, not of the whole L.
• Bed: about 110 cm (43 in) over a 160 cm bed, 120 cm (47 in) over a 180 cm one.
• Sideboard or dining table: 100–160 cm (39–63 in), inside the length of the furniture.
• A wall with nothing below it: half to two-thirds of the wall's width, with at least 30 cm clear at each side.

In the doorzonkamer, the Dutch living room that runs from the street to the garden, the long side wall is the main one, and a panoramic canvas of about 200 × 70 cm (79 × 28 in) holds its length without crowding a 2.40 m ceiling. City flats follow the same rule at a smaller scale: in 2017 each Amsterdam resident had about 40 m² of living space, against 53 m² nationally, so let the furniture, not the wall, set the width. More on panoramic canvases.

Dutch guides prefer one large painting to several small ones, for calm and focus, and offer a diptych or triptych as the alternative; coverage of 2026 living rooms asks for one dominant piece rather than many small frames. A big canvas does not oblige the rest of a small room to stay plain either, as one Dutch interior writer argues.

Split the work when it helps. Panels of 60–100 cm (24–39 in) each go up a steep stair that a single 2 m canvas may not turn, and a triptych spans a 6 m villa wall without a canvas taller than the ceiling allows. Keep gaps of 5–8 cm (2–3 in) so the set reads as one painting, and order the panels together, so they are painted in one hand and one palette.

Canal houses are narrow and deep: their plots were laid out at 18, then 20 to 26 Amsterdam feet of 28.13 cm, so about 5 to 7.3 m across. The front wall is mostly tall windows, which leaves narrow piers between them for a vertical, while the side wall of the front room, under about 2.8 m, takes a horizontal of up to about 200 × 150 cm (79 × 59 in).

The stair hall is often the one wall in a Dutch house with real height, as in the Bloemendaal villa pictured; hang a tall vertical there, centred for someone standing on the half-landing. Villa living rooms in Bloemendaal, Wassenaar or the Gooi are long and seen from five or six metres away: at that distance a 150 cm canvas reads as a picture, and one of 200–250 cm as part of the room. How large pieces get up Dutch stairs is covered in villas and canal houses; see also oversized art for stairwells and long walls.

On a free wall, the centre of the canvas at eye level works, and Dutch guides advise hanging at eye level or in line with the sofa. Over furniture, the furniture decides: the lower edge 15–25 cm above the seat back of a sofa, 20–30 cm above a headboard, and a little lower over a dining table, where everyone looks at it seated. Under a 2.40 m ceiling, check the top edge too: if it comes within 20 cm of the ceiling, choose a lower canvas rather than hanging this one lower. On a stair, keep each piece the same height above its step so the line follows the stair. More on living room art and bedroom art.

If a wall, a panel or a pair of doors sets the limit, give us the outside size with the frame included, and choose the frame first: gold, silver, black, white or wood. In a panelled room, like the bar of Hotel Des Indes in The Hague pictured, the panel is the size: measure inside the moulding and leave an even margin all round. Dutch writers prefer hand-painted canvas to glass-framed prints for depth and character, and a thin frame, or none, keeps that surface in view.

Texture changes the route as well as the look.

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.