Large wall art for living rooms and two-storey walls in US homes

The American great room joins the living room, family room and study in one space, often under a ceiling two storeys high. New plans give much of its outside wall to glass: one Houston-area plan pairs a two-storey great room with a 15-ft (4.6 m) multi-slide glass door to the patio, and buyer research quoted by a Scottsdale brokerage lists oversized windows and multi-glide doors among what buyers want. What remains is usually the fireplace wall, or the wall behind the sofa facing the kitchen, and that is where the large canvas goes.

Choose the painting early, too. Designer Lara Apelian notes that treasured art has increasingly become the starting point of a living room rather than its finishing touch, with its colours carried into the textiles. In an open plan the canvas is also seen from the dining table and the kitchen, so size it for the farthest seat, not the nearest. More ideas in art for living rooms.

Most American living rooms are not double height: the standard ceiling is 9 ft (2.74 m) on the ground floor and often 8 ft (2.44 m) upstairs. The sofa wall is also how Americans look for large art: Pinterest runs whole idea pages on art over a sofa. Under a 9-ft ceiling, a sofa back at about 85 cm and a gap of 15–25 cm leave about 1.5 m of wall, which a canvas 90–120 cm tall sits in comfortably, so width decides the size.

Long, low rooms push the format further. Post-war Manhattan living rooms run 20–30 ft (6–9 m) under ceilings of about 9 ft, and townhouses, a record 19% of single-family starts at the end of 2024, set the living room along one long party wall. There a panoramic of 200–250 cm (79–98 in), or two canvases side by side, holds the wall better than one tall piece. Every iHomeArt painting is made to your measurements; sofa-by-sofa sizes in inches are in the US size guide.

Great rooms have been common in American houses since the early 1990s, and new Texas estate plans still build around them. One plan in Prosper, north of Dallas, enters through a two-storey foyer into a great room and casual dining area under a cathedral ceiling; cathedral ceilings start at about 13 ft (4 m), and a full two-storey room is taller still. A painting chosen for a 9-ft room looks like a postage stamp on that wall.

Keep the art at the scale of the people in the room. A Scottsdale designer gave her own 16-ft (4.9 m) living room two fireplaces and two chandeliers at opposite ends to make it feel intimate; a canvas does the same job when its lower edge sits 20–30 cm above the mantel or the sofa and the wall above is left to breathe. For taller voids, see oversized wall art.

On one Houzz thread, an owner with a two-storey foyer wall of about 20 × 11 ft (6 × 3.4 m) was weighing a horizontal piece 7 ft wide and 4 ft tall, and a designer replied "Vertical art for this location, not horizontal". On another, the featured answer called "undramatic, small art" the biggest mistake in a vaulted foyer. One US designer also reports clients asking for a tone-setting entryway, "an arrival instead of just another pass-through foyer".

A vertical of about 120–150 cm wide and 200–280 cm tall (47–59 × 79–110 in), centred a little above eye level on the landing, reads from the door and from the stair. On a long stair wall, the alternative is a set of identical canvases spaced evenly up the rise: designers like grid walls of identical frames for their "order and symmetry", and a set painted in one hand gives you exactly that. More in art for entryways and vertical works.

Manhattan's pre-war buildings have ceilings of 10 ft (3 m) or more against 8–9 ft in newer ones, and their separate foyers, dining rooms and living rooms often leave more usable wall than an open floor plate. At the Apthorp on the Upper West Side, drawing rooms measure 17 × 28 ft (5.2 × 8.5 m) under 11-ft ceilings. San Francisco has the type too: a 1914 building on Nob Hill has whole-floor flats, its penthouse with a grand foyer and a formal dining room.

Measure the panel rather than the room: the stretch of wall between a window and the fireplace, or between a door and the corner, is the real frame, and a canvas filling about two-thirds of it looks planned with the mouldings. Formal rooms suit a matched pair either side of a fireplace, or a series around the dining table. Chicago's greystones, built on lots of 25 × 125 ft (7.6 × 38 m), work the other way: long, narrow rooms whose party wall takes a horizontal run.

Miami's new towers give the view side to glass. The Perigon in Mid-Beach pairs 10-ft (3 m) ceilings with wraparound terraces 10–12 ft deep, and every home at Four Seasons Private Residences Coconut Grove has a private foyer. A Miami brokerage that sells art-minded condos stresses uninterrupted wall planes and natural light that can be controlled.

Los Angeles took the type furthest. The Stahl House of 1960 has floor-to-ceiling glass on three sides, and a Hollywood Hills house beside Griffith Park gets about 12 hours of sunlight most days. In homes like these the living-room wall suits a horizontal of 150–200 cm (59–79 in), no taller than 100–120 cm, while the foyer takes the vertical; hang both out of direct sun and draw the blinds in the brightest hours. Palettes for coastal and desert homes are on US taste and styles.

Designers who buy art for clients mix their sources: preferred local artists, finds on Instagram, brokers and the art fairs. We sit alongside them as the studio that paints the walls a gallery cannot fill at the right size: some 1,300 catalogue designs, or a piece designed for your house, painted to each wall's measurements. One canvas can come first as a sample, with the rest following in the same hand; a whole house soon reaches ten pieces, where volume pricing starts.

Stage photographs go to whoever approves, you or your designer, and the next stage starts only once they say yes. Canvases arrive labelled by room, with a packing list, and we keep the codes on file for rooms you add later. Designers can start at art for interior designers; the wider picture is in our US wall art guide.

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.