Chalet wall art and paintings for Swiss lake villas and city flats

The chalets that designers publish are dense with material. In a Gstaad chalet renovated by Thierry Lemaire and Sophie Prezioso, rough larch and smooth Hainaut stone surround old paintings and vintage furniture mixed with more modern pieces. Paolo Moschino's Gstaad chalet hangs work by Riopelle and Tàpies, painters of thick, gestural surfaces, beside a fireplace of local stone, and Nicky Dobree's Gstaad apartment wraps its owner's art in silk wallpaper, panelled ceilings, tartan wool and cashmere.

Against that much wood and pattern, a pale, low-contrast canvas tends to sink into the panelling; warm ochre, rust and deep green, visible texture or a strong play of dark and light hold the wall instead. Find the wall before the picture: under the roof, a room often counts as living space once about two-thirds of it reaches 1.50 m in height, so upstairs the gable end or the knee wall is usually the one place a painting fits. And if you want the mountains, make them yours: the valley from your own balcony, painted from your photograph, reads as your place, where a generic peak reads as a souvenir.

A villa on the Collina d'Oro above Lugano is organised around a large window spanning the living room and the master suite, with an upholstered bench that gives the lake view 'museum character'. New villas in Cologny are sold on generous volumes and light everywhere, and in the Alps the designers of Six Senses Crans-Montana treat full-width windows as frames for the mountain landscape.

Where the view is the picture, do not hang a painting against it. Use the wall facing the window or a return wall beside it, where daylight falls across the canvas instead of glaring back from it; textured paint looks its best in that raking light. Then choose the palette on purpose: lake blues, greys and whites carry the view indoors, while a warm canvas answers a cold, north-facing outlook through the winter. Browse water and lake views and landscapes.

A lake villa has more walls than its owners expect. Villas sold in Geneva's lakeside communes mostly have 315 to 750 m² of living space, marketed with indoor pools, home cinemas, spa suites and staff flats, and even a villa built there in 2014 is sold on ceilings of over 3 m. Count the walls before choosing a single picture; from ten pieces, volume pricing applies to the whole house.

The register is quiet. On the Goldküste, one collector's rule for his new villa was that nothing may shine: no polished stone, no lacquer, walls in unsmoothed mineral plaster, and large-format works kept in pull-out racks because the collection keeps growing. In a renovated 1960s house on Lake Zürich, the art blends into rooms of soft green rather than announcing itself, and a Milan designer's brief for the Lugano villa asks for forms, colours and materials that age with dignity. Matte, textured and tonal canvases suit all three. More on art for villas and whole houses.

Switzerland has the lowest home-ownership share in Europe, about 36% of permanently occupied dwellings, and in the cities it is lower still: 26.8% in Zürich, 18.9% in Geneva and 15.5% in Basel-Stadt. Most city buyers are therefore hanging art in a flat they will one day leave, under a ceiling of 2.40 to 2.60 m.

That argues for fewer, better pieces. Over the sofa in a living and dining room of the recommended 20–24 m², one horizontal canvas about 120–160 cm wide and no more than about 110 cm high fills the wall without crowding the ceiling, and it will suit the next living room too. One large canvas on two hooks also leaves fewer holes to fill when you move out than a gallery wall of ten frames. Since tenants rarely repaint, the painting brings the colour: white walls still dominate Swiss living rooms, though the Zürich interior architect Iria Degen prefers warm cream or light beige. Sizes for every room are in the Swiss size guide.

Flats built before 1940 often have ceilings of 3.00 to 3.50 m with stucco, against 2.30 to 2.45 m in buildings of the 1950s to the 1980s. Geneva agents sell period apartments on their 'belle hauteur sous plafond' and parquet floors. Keep the top edge 40–50 cm below the cornice and the bottom about 90 cm above a sideboard, and roughly 180 cm of height remains: enough for a vertical piece, or two squares stacked.

Older rooms bring other walls. The narrow pier between two tall windows takes a slim vertical, and a panelled or dark-painted room needs a canvas with a light ground or a line of gold to carry across it. Such rooms are the exception: a Lugano architect calls minimal, all-white interiors his Swiss clients' usual preference. Tall works are under vertical paintings.

Switzerland's Alpine folk art is a living craft with named makers: the Scherenschnitt paper-cuts of the Saanenland go back to Johann Jakob Hauswirth (1808–1871), and cutters still work in villages around Gstaad. If a paper-cut is what you want, buy it from them. What we paint is the mountain or lake that is yours: the view from the chalet, the house on the shore, the family on the terrace, from your own photograph.

Swiss classics are possible too. One critic wrote that hardly a second-hand shop in Switzerland lacks reproductions of Albert Anker's quiet domestic scenes, and Anker and Ferdinand Hodler have been called the two giants of Swiss painting. Both died more than a century ago, so a Hodler lake or an Anker interior can be reproduced by hand at the size your wall needs; a work still in copyright needs the rights holder's permission. Your photograph must be your own or used with permission, and a design can be kept exclusive to you if you ask before we start. More on paintings from your own image.

The terms will feel familiar to anyone who has furnished a Swiss home. One Swiss interior-design firm may ask for 30–50% upfront, confirms orders in writing and will not take custom-made pieces back; another accepts written orders by letter, email or WhatsApp. With us, half is paid upfront against a proforma invoice and half once you approve the photograph of the finished canvas, before it ships.

For a chalet you visit at weekends, or a villa your interior designer is running, the stage photographs can go straight to whoever approves, and each canvas is labelled by room with a packing list. More in the Swiss wall art guide, on Swiss taste and styles and, for designers, on how we work with 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.