BAXCO
CURATING YOUR SPACE
YOUR WAY
MAKE IT YOUR OWN
This is my own living-room wall in East London.
It has evolved over time rather than being designed. In fact, it is still evolving, and that's the idea behind this page.
The best rooms are built slowly and look like they have evolved organically. A piece of art you love, a plant you somehow manage to keep alive, books you've collected, a knick-knack you picked up on your holidays, an old lamp you found at a market and a new one you dug out at TK Maxx, your dad's record collection you "borrowed" five years ago. Individually they're just things. Put them together and your personal aesthetic starts to take shape.
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Art can be a brilliant place to start. A single print can introduce colour to a white wall, change the mood of a room or become the starting point for everything you put around it. Add plants, books, objects, textiles and good lighting and suddenly you've created something that feels considered without looking like a Conran Shop full-kit wanker.
And you don't need to follow an interiors trend or give your home a label. Mid-century modern, maximalist, minimalist, Japandi, industrial – if you love it, use it. The interesting bit is what happens when you start putting the things you like together.
START WITH WHAT YOU LOVE
Don't start by asking what matches the sofa. Start with something you genuinely love.
A piece of art doesn't have to match everything else in a room. In fact, sometimes the thing that shouldn't quite work is what makes a room interesting. Choose something because you want to look at it every day, then see what you can build around it.
Pick out a colour from the artwork and repeat it somewhere else: a cushion, a plant pot, a lamp, a book or a piece of furniture. Look for shapes, textures and materials that speak to one another. Put something old next to something new. Hang a beautiful botanical print amongst real plants. Let an indigo Japanese fish print introduce a completely new colour into an otherwise neutral room.
Don't worry about getting everything right at once. The best spaces evolve as you find things you love and work out how they sit together.
Start with the things you love. The aesthetic will follow.
CHOOSE A WALL
A gallery-style grouping of prints can completely change the character of a room without changing anything else. Build a statement wall beside a dining table, create something calmer above a desk in your home office, or turn an awkward empty corner into somewhere your eye naturally goes.
Collections work particularly well together because there is already something connecting the images. Hang three botanicals amongst your houseplants. Build a grid from the Umi series. Put a Japanese diptych or triptych above a sideboard. Mix maps with objects you've collected on your travels. Or ignore all of that and combine completely different things simply because you like the way they look together.
You don't need identical frames or perfect symmetry either. A formal grid can look fantastic, but so can a wall that has grown organically over time. Mix sizes, orientations and even styles. Leave enough space for each piece to breathe and look for some element – colour, subject, scale or simply mood – that pulls everything together.
USE COLOUR
Colour is one of the easiest ways to change the mood of a room, and art gives you a great excuse to introduce it.
Against a white or neutral wall, a strongly coloured print can become the focal point of the entire space. The deep indigo of the Umi collection, the greens of botanical prints or the reds and golds found throughout The Floating World can add impact without you having to reach for a tin of paint.
If your walls are already coloured, you can work with them. Look for artwork containing complementary colours if you want contrast, or choose colours from a similar palette for something calmer and more harmonious.
Then repeat small amounts of those colours elsewhere. Pick up a red from a print in a book cover or cushion. Echo a deep blue in a ceramic pot or lamp. Let the green of a botanical print connect naturally with the plants around it. You don't need much. A colour appearing two or three times across a room can be enough to make everything feel connected.
And don't become a slave to colour theory. It's useful, but your eyes are pretty good at telling you when something looks great.
Use the rules when they help. Break them when they don't.
Renting: Take your space with you.
You don't have to own a property to make it feel like home.
If you're renting, particularly in a city like London, chances are you inherited somebody else's white walls, questionable flooring and a list of things your landlord would rather you didn't touch. That doesn't mean you have to live in a space that feels temporary.
Art, plants, books, lamps, textiles and the things you've collected can completely change the character of a rented room without changing the room itself. Build a wall above your desk. Create a calm corner around a favourite print and a couple of plants. Turn the wall beside your dining table into something people talk about when friends come over. Layer the things you love until the space starts to feel like yours.
And the great thing about creating a home this way is that very little of it belongs to the building. When it's time to move, the prints come off the walls, the plants go into the back of a cab, the books and objects go into boxes and the lamps get unplugged.
The landlord gets the walls back. You take your beautifully curated space with you.
CHOOSING THE RIGHT SIZE
SIZE GUIDE
Size can completely change how a print feels in a room. A3 is the standard print size and gives a piece enough presence to stand alone without dominating a space. A4 works beautifully on smaller walls, shelves and as part of a gallery arrangement. A2 can become a real statement piece and create a strong focal point in a room.
If you're unsure, think about the wall rather than the room. Consider the furniture beneath it, the other objects around it and how much space you want the artwork to occupy.