How to Choose Oil Painting: 5 Unusual Tips from Experts

If you’re looking to add some decor to your walls, you may consider picking up an oil painting or two. It can be difficult, though, to decide which painting to choose, when there are thousands of options available.

We’re going to hopefully make this a little easier, by giving you five tips from the experts to help you choose your next oil painting.

1. Size

The worst thing that could happen is that you find the oil painting of your dreams, only to get it home and realize that it doesn’t fit in the available space you wanted to hang it. This would leave you with a painting that you love, but nowhere to put it.

The best way to prevent this problem is to spend some time assessing your home or office to find the best location for potential paintings. It’s important to know what items the painting will hang near, as this will influence how the room looks overall.

While assessing your home, consider making some measurements to have an idea of the largest painting that could fit in certain locations.

When you go to make your purchase, you can compare these measurements against the size of each painting that you want to order so that you don’t come home with an oil painting that’s too large.

But you’ll also want to pay attention to not buying paintings that are too small. This is is the part that might sound the most unusual but it’s important. If you have a small painting adrift on an empty wall, it isn’t going to have the same pop that you might want it to.

2. Style

When looking at oil paintings for sale, you’ll notice that paintings can be done in a wide variety of styles. You may even be a fan of a particular style, such as Baroque or Renaissance.

When choosing a painting, though, you’ll want to make sure that the style of the painting matches the style of the furniture and another decor of the room. If you have all modern furniture, for example, a Baroque painting might look a bit out of place.

When making oil paintings buy, you’ll want to make sure that style looks cohesive between all elements in the room.

3. Color

It’s likely that you already have an established decor in your home, in which the various furniture and other elements match each other. Because you’re working with an established color scheme, the oil painting you choose needs to match the room in which it will hang.

The colors don’t need to match exactly, but enough so that the painting doesn’t look out of place.

4. Subject

The subject matter that you would like in a painting is heavily influenced by where the painting will hang. If you’re looking for a piece to put in a nursery, for example, you may want to choose subjects such as landscapes or other nature scenes.

This will differ highly from a home library, where you may want to house a painting with subjects that are more serious.

5. Quality

Whether you’re looking at original works or reproductions, quality is an important element to look at when purchasing an oil painting. Quality can be described in terms of the composition of the artwork, or by examining the quality of the materials used to create the piece.

While the composition is important, we have somewhat covered that by discussing elements such as color and subject.

The element of quality that we’re focused on is the quality of the materials used to create the painting. You don’t want an oil painting that fades or warps easily, so high quality is important.

Be sure that any paintings you buy are made from high-quality oil paints that won’t chip or fade easily. If you choose an oil painting on canvas made from high-quality materials, you can know that the artwork will last for years to come.

Conclusion

Adding an oil painting to a room can breathe new life into a tired space.

It can bring joy to you and your guests and can spark some interesting conversations. Now that you’ve got some tips on choosing an oil painting, you’re one step closer to finding the perfect painting for your home or office.

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