Dare to be colorful: choosing colorful wall art
Colourful art works when one colour in it already lives in the room. Start there, and you can be much braver than you think.
Why colour is back
After years of beige, the direction has turned. Pinterest’s 2026 predictions describe a move away from “safe minimalism” towards expressive rooms, with five colours to watch: cool blue, jade, plum noir, wasabi and persimmon (The Nordroom). In the Nordics the same shift is called Scandi maximalism: calm Scandinavian balance, bolder colour (Rooster).
Three rules for colourful art
- Repeat one colour from the room. A cushion, a rug, a book spine, a chair. When one colour in the print already lives in the room, the rest of the print is allowed to be loud.
- Let one colour lead. A print with one dominant colour and a few accents reads clearly across a room. Five equal colours read as noise.
- Use the wall. Warm walls (terracotta, ochre) make blue and green art glow; cool walls (sage, grey-blue) make orange and pink sing. Opposites on the colour wheel are the easy win.
Where to find colour that lasts
Some of the most colourful art ever made is now in the public domain and free to print: Hilma af Klint’s The Ten Largest (1907), Hiroshige’s woodblock prints, Kandinsky’s early improvisations. They are bold, they have survived a hundred years of taste, and they are what we start our own collection with.
Colour and size go together
A small colourful print on a big wall looks like a mistake; a large one looks like a decision. Get the size right first (what size art goes above a sofa), then be brave with the colour.