Living with the work
A painting in the bedroom: the easy room and its one problem
6 min read ▪ 30 August 2026
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The bedroom is where most people say they will put it, and it is the one room where they will hardly ever see it. Willem van der Krieken on the wall people forget.
Where should a painting hang in a bedroom?
Not above the bed, if you bought it to look at. Above the headboard you see it twice a day, in the dark, from underneath. The wall you actually see is the one facing the bed, and the one you wake up to. The bedroom removes every social question, which makes it the easiest room and the least interesting one.
- Above the headboard is a decorating decision. The facing wall is a looking decision.
- Nobody else sees it, so the size question is the only question left.
- Bedside lamps light a canvas from below, which is the one angle to avoid.
The easiest room in the house
A bedroom has a door, and behind the door there is nobody. No guest, no cleaner, no client, no parent, no child's friend. Every question in this pillar about who sees the work and what they think of you for owning it simply does not arise.
That is why it is the room most people name first when they are still nervous, and why it is a perfectly reasonable answer. If the bedroom is what makes the difference between owning the painting and not owning it, put it in the bedroom. The conversation you were dreading mostly does not happen anywhere in the house, but in a bedroom it definitively does not.
And its one problem
Almost everyone puts it above the bed, and above the bed is behind your head.
Work out what that actually means over a year. You see the canvas when you walk in to fetch something, at an angle, in passing. You see it last thing at night with the lamp off. You do not see it while you are in the room, because you are lying under it. A painting you could not stop looking at — which is the only good reason to buy one — has been hung in the one position in the house where you never look at it.
Above the bed is a decorating decision: it fills the wall the room is arranged around, and it is the wall a visitor to the doorway sees. That is a real reason and it is not the same reason.
The three bedroom walls, ranked
| Wall | When you see it | Verdict |
|---|---|---|
| Facing the bed | Sitting up, reading, waking, getting dressed — hours a week | Best. This is the wall to use if you bought it to look at |
| The wall you wake towards | First thing, every day, from the pillow | Very good, and the one nobody thinks of. Check the angle from lying down |
| Above the headboard | Walking in and out. Never from the bed | The decorating choice. Correct if the room is the point rather than the painting |
The second row is worth ten minutes of your time. Lie on the bed, on your own side, and look at where your eyes land. In most bedrooms that is a stretch of wall between a wardrobe and a window that has never had anything on it. It is not a wall anybody would choose from a floor plan, and it is the wall you will look at more than any other surface you own.
Size, which is now the whole question
With the social question gone, only the arithmetic is left. Above a bed, the canvas wants to be two thirds to three quarters of the bed width — and every canvas in this series is upright, with the widest at 100 cm, so above a 160 or 180 cm bed nothing here reaches that proportion. What size painting works above a bed sets it out per bed width and gives three honest ways round it, including the diagram.
On the facing wall the constraint is different and much looser. You are looking from three or four metres, across the bed, which is more viewing distance than any other room in a normal house offers. That is the wall where the largest canvases in the collection make sense — Riae (Blue Hair) at 100 × 100 cm, or a 120 × 100. Height is what you have room for here, so use it.
Light in a bedroom
Bedroom light is warm, low and often on the wrong side, and two of those three are good news. Warm light suits skin tones; a painting of a person looks better under 2700 K than under daylight. Low light is fine — oil on canvas has no glass in front of it, so there is nothing to reflect.
The one thing to avoid is a bedside lamp directly under the canvas, throwing light up the surface from below. Uplight on a figure does something specific and unflattering, and it is the only lighting mistake in a bedroom that actually shows. Move the lamp a foot to the side and the problem is gone.
The ceiling fitting above the headboard has the same flattening effect described in the hallway article, for the same reason: light coming straight down a vertical surface kills the modelling.
Two walls to leave alone
The wall above a radiator. In most Dutch bedrooms that is under the window, so it rarely competes for the painting anyway — but if the radiator sits on a side wall, that wall is out. Rising heat dries the canvas from behind. Sunlight, radiators and the walls you should not use explains what it does over years.
The wall in direct sun. Bedroom curtains are usually closed at night and open all day, and a south-facing bedroom wall gets more direct sun than any wall downstairs. Fading is slow, cumulative and irreversible.
Neither is a reason to avoid the bedroom. Both are reasons to pick the wall with the wall in mind rather than the furniture. If you are still weighing rooms, where to hang a nude painting, room by room gives a verdict on each — and the guest bedroom is a completely different problem to this one.
The whole series is here, twenty-three canvases with the size of each one.
Questions people ask
Where should a nude painting hang in a bedroom?
On the wall facing the bed, if you bought it to look at. Above the headboard you only see it walking in and out, never from the bed itself. The wall you wake towards is the third option and the one people forget, and it is worth checking from the pillow.
Is the bedroom a good place for erotic art?
It is the easiest room, because nobody else goes in it and every social question disappears. It is also the least interesting for the same reason. If the bedroom is what makes the difference between owning the painting and not owning it, use the bedroom.
What size painting works above a bed?
Two thirds to three quarters of the bed width is the rule, so 105 to 120 cm above a 160 cm bed. Every canvas in this series is upright and the widest is 100 cm, so nothing here reaches that above a standard double. Centre it as a deliberate vertical instead.
Does a bedside lamp damage a painting?
No, but it lights it badly. A lamp directly under the canvas throws light up the surface from below, which is the one angle that flatters nothing. Move it to the side. Heat and direct sun are the real risks, and they come from radiators and windows rather than lamps.
