Majlis wall decoration in Oman, and art for the family rooms beyond

A traditional Omani majlis has day beds or floor seating for at least eight, rich-coloured cushions, a low table and a silver coffee and tea service. Guests sit around the edge, and coffee is poured starting from the right of the room or with the eldest and most distinguished guests. Everyone sees the wall opposite the door on arrival, so the main painting goes there, above the seating and centred on the wall.

The long side walls are where majlis wall decoration most often goes wrong. Above continuous seating, hang one panoramic canvas of about 200–250 cm, or two or three matched panels hung as one, across half to two-thirds of the wall. One Muscat design guide also suggests calligraphy in gold or silver foil, geometric watercolours, or a gallery wall of matching frames, if you prefer several smaller pieces.

Colour has two registers. The traditional majlis is earthy, with gold, red, silver, ochre and orange, and a canvas in sand, cream and gold rests the eye between the cushions. A modern majlis with sofas and pale walls works the other way round: in the desert palette the same guide suggests, light beige, sandy beige, terracotta and dusty rose, the painting carries the colour. Subjects are in Omani taste and styles.

At Al Mouj the entrance hall leads straight on to the living and dining room and the majlis. In larger villas it becomes a room in its own right, such as the raised, double-height entry foyer beside the majlis in Al Mouj's oceanfront Zunairah villas.

Let the ceiling choose the format. As a guide, Oman's 2017 building rules for mixed residential and commercial plots set rooms on upper floors at 2.8–3.4 m; under a ceiling like that, a vertical canvas of about 100 × 140 cm above a console holds the wall. A double-height foyer or stair void takes 200 cm or more, or two canvases stacked as a pair. Courtyards are still central to many Omani villas; where one brings daylight into the hall, hang the painting on a wall the sun does not reach. Keep it in the majlis palette, so the hall prepares guests for the room ahead. See vertical works and art for entrance halls.

Newer villas join the two: at Al Mouj the living and dining room is one space off the entrance hall, and a design article on modern Omani villas describes open layouts with large living rooms and dining areas, still framed by arches, courtyards and wooden shutters. From the sofa you see both walls at once, so two unrelated paintings compete.

Choose one family of colours and vary the scale: over the sofa, a canvas about two-thirds the sofa's width; over the dining table or sideboard, a horizontal piece about two-thirds the table's length, hung a little lower for seated eyes. Geometry suits the dining wall. Omani gypsum plasterwork is built from triangles and circles interlaced with plant motifs, and a canvas in gold, cream and white echoes it without copying it. See art for dining rooms and geometric works.

The family sitting area sits beside the open kitchen at Al Mouj; in Salalah the family hall is a room of its own. Here the majlis brief no longer applies: a Dubai studio's Muscat villa sets blue, yellow and pink furnishings against warm earth tones, and a palette-knife bouquet or a garden scene is as happy here as it would be loud in the majlis.

Many villa interiors are finished as calm shells, like a 2025 renovation of an 850 m² Muscat villa in grey and black with black metal accents; the colour and the personal pieces are left to you. It is also the natural home for a painting from your own photograph: the children, a grandparent's house, the family's horses or the view from the farm. Send the picture and we suggest the size and finish it will paint best at; see paintings from your own image. Near an open kitchen, keep it clear of the hob's steam.

Bedrooms are the most private rooms in the house, so the brief is rest rather than display. Above a bed with a headboard of about 120 cm, a canvas 100–150 cm wide, hung 20–30 cm above the headboard, fills the wall without pressing down on it; guest and children's rooms take 60–100 cm pieces.

The coast supplies the palette, and Muscat's newest luxury hotels sleep their guests in it: at Mandarin Oriental the rooms take the blue of the sea and the tones of the dunes. The same calm suits a bedroom at home. In the most decorated villas plaster takes over, and a 14,000 sq ft villa on the Muscat coast has guest-bedroom walls moulded with cascading wildflowers. A textured floral or plaster-relief canvas brings some of that depth to a plain wall, and travels stretched or framed rather than rolled. See art for bedrooms.

Much of Muscat's new housing is smaller than the classic villa. Sultan Haitham City alone is planned for 20,000 homes, and one of its five-bedroom villas fits 413 m² onto a 400 m² plot, over three floors and a roof terrace. In Wadi Zaha, in the same city, townhouses are 210 m² and apartments run from 50 m² studios to 155 m² three-bedroom flats.

In a townhouse or a flat, one strong painting in the living room does more than several small ones: about 100–150 cm wide over the sofa, then 60–100 cm canvases in the bedrooms and the hall. A three-storey villa raises a practical question: how a large canvas reaches the top floor. Measure the stair turn and the lift door first; if either is tight, a two- or three-panel set reaches the room easily and hangs as one. More sizes are in the Oman size guide.

New homes keep arriving: the first villas in Sultan Haitham City's Al Wafa district are due for handover from mid-2026. Muscat's design and fit-out studios seldom include art in what they offer, so it is easily left until the budget has gone on furniture.

Instead, send us the floor plan, or a photo of each wall with its width and the ceiling height, and we suggest a painting and a size for each, from some 1,300 catalogue designs or designed for your house. Order one canvas first if you want to see the brushwork, and the rest is painted to match it. Stage photographs go straight to whoever approves them, you or your designer, and each canvas arrives labelled with its room and position, with a packing list. See art for whole villas, art for interior designers and the Oman wall art guide.