Office wall art in Switzerland for banks, head offices and clinics

In Swiss private banking, the client room is where art earns its place. Julius Baer says it hangs art at the workplace because it encourages a culture of conversation, and in 2005 a Swiss business magazine described UBS using its collection as a platform for client events. The brief for a meeting room follows: a work interesting enough to open a conversation and quiet enough not to dominate a difficult one. Abstraction, matte texture and tonal landscape do this well; political, religious or provocative subjects do not.

Client rooms are often small, with glass on one side, which leaves the wall above the credenza as the only position. Everyone sees it seated, so hang it lower than in a corridor, its bottom edge about 20–30 cm above the furniture. Along a run of meeting rooms, one design painted in several palettes keeps the floor consistent while each room feels its own. More on art for meeting rooms and boardrooms.

Swiss rules set 2.40 m as the minimum clear height for habitable rooms; new buildings commonly reach 2.50–2.60 m, pre-1940 buildings 3.00–3.50 m. Private banks, law firms and family offices often occupy those older floors in central Zürich, Basel and Geneva, where tall doors and stucco break up each wall; most head offices sit on the newer side. The ceiling sets the format:

Measure the space between doors, windows and radiators, not the room; for a larger wall, send us a photo with its width and we suggest the size and format. Sizes for Swiss homes are in the Swiss size guide.

The corporate collections set the tone: UBS shows work from the 1960s to today in its offices. Alpine postcards are rare on such walls, and an edelweiss-and-cowbell scene would read as a souvenir in a Paradeplatz client room. Two routes bring the country in without that risk.

One is the landscape seen through a contemporary eye: a ridge line, snow light or the pale grey of Jura limestone, painted as texture and tone rather than as a view. The other is the classic itself. A swissinfo profile of a leading Swiss collection calls Ferdinand Hodler and Albert Anker the two giants of Swiss art; both died more than a century ago, so a Hodler lake or an Anker village scene can be repainted by hand at the size of your wall. Any artist still in copyright needs the rights holder's permission first. Palettes and subjects for Swiss rooms in general are on the Swiss taste and styles page.

Swiss head offices hang art well beyond the boardroom. Julius Baer counts staff restaurants and corridors among its hanging places; the health fund CSS had built up about 120 works over two decades by 2010; and the reinsurer Swiss Re opened its collection to the public during Zurich Art Weekend in 2024.

On a glass-partitioned tower floor in Zürich or Basel, the art goes where the walls are solid: the lift lobby, the core, the ends of corridors and the staff restaurant. A corridor is seen at walking pace, so give it a series, one composition varied piece by piece, one per bay and at a single height, as a Zürich tower hotel did in 2025 with 20 large-format works by one local artist on every floor. Each canvas is labelled by floor and position, with a packing list, and its code stays on file, so the next floor or a new office in Geneva or Lugano can be painted to match. More on corridor art and art for corporate head offices.

Swiss private wealth reaches well beyond the two big cities: Zug is home to some 45 centi-millionaires and Lugano to 40, and many such families run their affairs from an office of a few rooms. A family office rarely needs a scheme for forty walls; it needs the right painting for the reception, the meeting room and the principal's office, chosen to sit beside the works the family already owns. A law firm is similar: one strong piece where clients wait, quieter ones where they sit and read.

This is also where a painting from your own image makes sense: the family's estate or home town, the lake from the meeting-room window, a crest or the firm's logo. Send it with the wall size; we tell you how it will translate to canvas and suggest the size and finish. You need to own the image or have permission to use it. See paintings from your own image.

Klinik Hirslanden Zürich holds more than 1,300 works of contemporary Swiss art, chosen to create an atmosphere that stirs feelings and conversation. At Kantonsspital Graubünden, the art commission's chair points to a WHO synthesis of more than 3,000 studies linking a pleasant environment with shorter stays and less pain medication. The new Kinderspital Zürich chose several of its works by competition and added a mural more than 65 metres long.

A private clinic or a dental, physiotherapy or aesthetic practice works at a smaller scale, usually without a curator. In waiting areas, choose landscapes, lakes and soft abstraction that people can rest their eyes on; in treatment rooms, one calm piece on the wall the patient faces; in a children's practice, colour and something to find in the picture. See art for hospitals and clinics and landscape paintings.