Kitchen wall art: small warm formats, and where to put them

A kitchen needs more than a spice-rack frame

It is often the room where you spend the most time on your feet, and yet the one you decorate least. Wall units, splashback, appliances: only fragments of wall are left, and you give up.

That is a pity, because those fragments are enough. A kitchen does not need a large canvas, it needs one well-placed point of colour.

What the kitchen imposes

Two constraints govern the choice, and they point the same way: small format.

The first is available space. Between the top of the splashback and the underside of the wall units, there is rarely more than fifty to sixty centimetres. On the wall of an eating corner there is more, but you have to reckon with the table and chairs.

The second is viewing distance. In a kitchen you are always close to the walls. A canvas is looked at from a metre or less, which makes the small format not merely acceptable but preferable. This selection therefore keeps works of sixty-five centimetres at most, complemented by our small formats.

The precautions, honestly

It has to be said plainly: an oil painting on canvas likes neither steam nor grease splatter. That is no reason to give up, but the placement has to be chosen with some method.

What to avoid absolutely: the wall directly behind the hob, the wall above the sink, and any spot within a metre and a half of a regular source of steam. Airborne grease settles on the material and becomes very hard to remove without damaging the paint.

What works very well, on the other hand: the wall of the eating corner, the wall facing the worktop, the space above a sideboard or trolley, and the wall of an open kitchen on the living room side. In a well-ventilated kitchen with an effective extractor, these placements pose no problem at all.

Our guide on caring for an abstract painting details how to clean an oil on canvas and, above all, what never to do, such as using a household product or a damp cloth.

The colours that suit a kitchen

The canvases gathered here are warm and clean, and that is no accident. Warm shades, oranges, reds and yellows, are traditionally associated with appetite and conviviality, and they work particularly well in a room where you are active.

They also have a practical advantage: a kitchen holds a lot of neutral surfaces, white, steel, pale wood. A colourful canvas stands out there immediately, where a work in muted tones would blend into the cabinet fronts.

If your kitchen is already colourful, bright fronts or a patterned splashback, reverse the logic: a calmer canvas, in a wabi-sabi spirit, will settle the whole rather than overload it.

Three placements that work

The wall of the eating corner is the most obvious and the safest. Hang the centre of the canvas about one metre fifty-five from the floor if you eat standing at a counter, a little lower for a classic table where you sit.

The stretch of wall between two wall units suits the smallest formats. Centre the canvas within the available space rather than on the whole wall, otherwise it will look off.

The wall of an open kitchen, on the living side, allows larger formats and links the two spaces. In that case, choose a canvas that picks up a colour already present in the living room: see our living room canvases to keep the two rooms coherent.

Open or closed kitchen: not the same choice

This is a distinction that genuinely changes the selection, and it is often forgotten.

In a closed kitchen, the canvas only converses with the kitchen itself. You are free to choose a clean bright colour without worrying about the rest of the home, and it is a chance to risk a shade you would not have put in the living room. Formats stay small, placements safe, and the whole is thought of as a bubble.

In a kitchen open to the living room, the work is visible from the sofa. It therefore belongs visually to both rooms, and has to agree with whatever is already hanging on the other side. Two methods work: share a common colour between the two canvases, or stay within the same style family, for example two bohemian works or two Scandinavian ones.

What to avoid in an open kitchen: a very colourful canvas on the kitchen side and a very neutral one on the living side. The eye compares them constantly, and the second looks bland.

Hand-painted, in a studio in Isère

Every work shown here is an oil on cotton canvas painted by Régine Gardan, signed and delivered with its certificate of authenticity. The edges are painted: no framing is needed, which is a real advantage in a kitchen, where glass would fog and mark.