The Starry Night
From $340
By room
Paintings for the living room
The largest wall in the house, the widest sofa, the most eyes — and the most expensive mistake if the size is wrong. Start here rather than with a painter's name.
The living-room painting is a scale decision before it is a taste decision. The rule that works: the canvas should span about two thirds of the sofa's width, and its centre should sit 57 to 60 inches off the floor. A painting that is too small is the single most common regret we hear about, and no frame fixes it.
Subject-wise, the living room takes almost anything except intimacy. It is a social room: landscapes, dance, big skies and group scenes all work; a small single portrait staring at the sofa does not. If the wall is very wide, two related paintings — a pair of seascapes, two Monets from the same year — beat one stretched canvas that has lost its composition.
Colour: pick the painting after the sofa, not before. A busy patterned room wants a quiet canvas (Water Lilies, The Magpie); a plain room can carry The Starry Night or Liberty Leading the People without competing.
Getting the size right
Above the sofa: canvas width ≈ two thirds of sofa width. Above a console or sideboard, match the furniture width and leave 6–8 inches of air between the two.
Every painting here can be made in a size that is not listed. Send the wall width and we will name the size that keeps the composition intact — the answer is sometimes 'narrower than you think', which is a cheap correction to make before the order rather than after.
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
One large canvas reads as calm; a gallery wall reads as collected. If you already own several smaller pieces, hang them in a tight rectangle centred at 57 inches and add one anchor piece at least 24 × 36 inches. If you are starting from zero, buy the anchor first.
Match the temperature, not the colour. A warm painting — ochres, golds, sunset reds — sits well with warm neutrals; a cool painting wants grey, blue or white around it. Exact matching makes both look chosen by committee.
In a living room, framed — the frame is what makes the wall read as finished. Gallery-wrapped (unframed, painted edges) is the modern option and suits abstracts and quiet landscapes; ornate gold belongs with the classical compositions or not at all.
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.