How to choose one painting when you like several

Why starting with the picture goes wrong

On a screen every painting is the same size. A 50 × 30 cm canvas and a 120 × 100 cm canvas arrive in your browser as two rectangles of identical width, in identical light, at an identical distance. The single variable that decides whether a painting works in your house has been removed before you start.

So a shortlist made by scrolling is a shortlist made without the deciding information, and scrolling further does not add any. That is why the shortlist keeps growing instead of shrinking. It is not indecision, it is a missing measurement.

There is a second reason, and it is less comfortable. Choosing on subject means choosing what you find attractive, and that is a fast, confident judgement that keeps changing. Choosing on the wall means choosing what you are willing to be seen to own, which is slower and holds. Most people who buy work like this report the same thing: the picture they wanted in week one is not the one they were glad about in year three.

Step one: the wall

Pick the wall before you pick anything else. Stand in front of it. Three questions, in this order.

Which room is it, and who walks past it?

This is the real question behind every other one on this site, and it is worth answering honestly rather than aspirationally. A hallway is seen by everyone who visits, for four seconds each. A bedroom is seen by you, at length, and by almost nobody else. A living room is the hardest case because people sit in front of it. None of those is the right answer — they are different jobs, and they suit different paintings. The room-by-room version is in where to hang a nude painting.

How far back can you stand?

Measure it. In a corridor you may only ever see the canvas from a metre and a half, which favours a smaller work with something to look at close up. Across a living room you see it from four metres, and at that distance a small canvas disappears into the wall it is on.

The mistake runs in one direction almost every time: people buy too small for a big room, because a large canvas feels like a bigger decision. It is a bigger decision. It is also usually the right one.

How much light does it get?

Daylight from which side, and what happens in the evening. Two practical constraints, and both are about the paint rather than the taste: keep an oil painting out of direct sunlight, and light it warm. Around 2700 to 3000 K flatters skin tones; cold light turns oil paint grey. A wall that gets three hours of direct afternoon sun is not a wall for a painting.

Step two: the size

Now the wall has a width, and the width does the choosing.

Two rules govern, and they come from how to display erotic art at home. A canvas should occupy roughly half to two thirds of the width of the wall or the furniture beneath it. And there should be at least 30 cm of clear wall on either side of it. For small canvases the second rule binds; for large ones the first does. Take whichever number is larger.

Two things fall out of that table immediately. A wall under about 120 cm wide takes a small work or nothing at all — hanging a 100 cm canvas on it does not make the wall bigger. And the largest canvases in the collection want two metres of wall, which most rooms have exactly one of.

Height is the second constraint and it is quieter. The centre of a painting belongs at about 145 cm from the floor. A 120 cm canvas hung that way runs from 85 cm to 205 cm, so it needs a ceiling of roughly 235 cm before the top edge starts crowding it. Worth measuring before you fall in love with a tall one. The bed case, where the wall is short and the furniture is wide, is worked out in what size painting works above a bed.

By the end of this step the twenty-three are usually four.

Step three: the subject

Only now. And the question that arrives with it is almost always the same one: I like the painting but I have no idea who she is — does that matter?

Less than you think in the first week, more than you think after a year.

In the first week the painting is a composition: a colour, a pose, a shape on a wall. After a year it is a person you look at every day, and at that point knowing that she is Riae, or Kayleigh, or Deelee, and that she is a working model whose own image is her livelihood, changes what you are looking at. It stops being a nude and becomes a portrait. Every canvas here carries the first name of the woman in it and credits the photograph it came from, which is why the answer to who is she exists at all — see the women in Painted Idols.

Two practical notes on subject, both of which affect the room more than the taste.

Where she is looking decides how the room feels. A subject looking out at the viewer confronts everyone who comes in. A subject looking away, down, or at something outside the frame lets people be in the room without being addressed. That single compositional fact matters more in a living room than the amount of skin does — a point made at length in erotic art or pornography.

If you keep landing on the same woman, that is information. Several of these women were painted more than once, and not by plan — Riae four times, for one. If your shortlist of four turns out to be three canvases of the same person, you have already chosen and you are arguing with yourself about which afternoon.

A worked example, and the test that settles it

A wall of 180 cm between a door and a window, in a living room you cross at about three and a half metres, north light, no direct sun. Ceiling 260 cm.

Step one says: living room, long viewing distance, good light. Step two says a canvas of 90 to 100 cm wide, so 120 × 100 cm and 120 × 90 cm are both in and everything under 60 cm wide is out. Step three now chooses between three or four paintings on subject alone, which is a pleasant afternoon rather than a stalled decision. Riae (Orange Van), 120 × 100 cm at €900, is the sort of thing that wall is asking for.

Reverse the room and the answer reverses. A 95 cm strip of wall in a hallway, seen from a metre and a half: Natalee (White Top) at 50 × 30 cm and €250 fits, and the 120 cm canvas that looked best on the screen would have been a mistake you paid €900 for.

Then one last step, and it costs nothing. Leave the tab of the painting you have landed on open for a week and notice whether you keep going back to it. Almost nobody does this and it predicts satisfaction better than any amount of reading. If you are still opening it on day seven, the wall has chosen and so have you.

The whole series is here, twenty-three canvases, one size each.

Questions people ask

How do I choose a painting for my home?

In three steps and in this order: the wall, the size, then the subject. Decide which room it goes in and who walks past it, measure how far back you can stand and how much light the wall gets, then let the width of the wall decide the size. Subject comes last, because it is the part that narrows fastest once the first two are settled.

What size painting do I need for my wall?

The canvas should occupy roughly half to two thirds of the width of the wall or the furniture below it, with at least 30 cm of clear wall on either side, and you take whichever of those two numbers is larger. In practice: a wall of 90 cm takes a 30 cm wide canvas, 120 cm takes 60 cm, and a 100 cm wide canvas wants 160 to 200 cm of wall. Under about 120 cm of wall, hang something small or nothing.

Does it matter who the woman in the painting is?

Not much in the first week, quite a lot after a year. Early on you are looking at a composition; later you are looking at a person every day. Each canvas here carries the first name of the woman in it and credits the photograph it came from, so the question has an answer, and having one tends to turn a nude into a portrait.

I like six of them. How do I narrow it down?

Stop comparing the paintings and go and measure the wall. Width, viewing distance, light. That eliminates most of a shortlist in ten minutes, because every canvas here has exactly one size and most of them will not fit the wall you had in mind. Whatever survives, leave open in a browser tab for a week and see which one you keep returning to.