Water Lilies
From $289
By room
Paintings for the bedroom
The last thing you see at night and the first in the morning. Calm palettes, soft light, and not a single staring portrait.
Bedroom paintings should lower the room's pulse. That rules out more than you would expect: battle scenes, screaming figures, high-contrast abstractions and anything with direct eye contact. What survives the test is water, gardens, dawn light and figures asleep to their own drama.
Water Lilies is the most-shipped bedroom painting we have, and the reason is simple: horizontal, green-blue, no narrative. Almond Blossom does the same job with more air in it. Monet's Venice at dusk belongs on the wall opposite the bed, where the evening light in the painting answers the room.
Size in a bedroom is generous: 16 × 20 to 24 × 36 covers most beds. Above a king bed, one wide canvas beats a pair almost every time.
Getting the size right
Above the headboard: leave 8–10 inches between the top of the headboard and the bottom of the frame, and keep the total width under the mattress width so the painting reads as part of the bed rather than as a second headboard.
If the wall is dark, choose a painting with its own light — a dusk scene, not a night one. Dusk has colour in the sky; night needs a lamp to live on.
The full method — measuring, hanging height, sightlines — is in the wall-size guide. Every painting on this page can be made to the size your wall actually needs; the price on each card is the published starting price for the smallest canvas.
Questions
Questions about this room
Not luck — optics. A face watching the bed is uncomfortable for exactly the reason it seems, and guests feel it too. If you want a figure, choose one looking away: The Soul of the Rose, Echo and Narcissus, a dancer mid-turn.
Light oak or unframed gallery wrap. Dark walnut and gilt pull the room towards the formal, which is the opposite of what the wall is for.
Yes, but expect reflections at certain hours — oil varnish is matte and far more forgiving than glass, which is one more reason an oil beats a framed print in a bedroom.
Send us the wall instead of guessing
A photograph of the wall with a tape measure in it is enough. We will show any painting on this page at true scale in your room, free, before you decide.