Your family is your life. You love having family photos to hold onto the days when your kids are young. And since this is so important to you, and you’re investing in these images, you want to actually enjoy them on a regular basis. Instead of having a bunch of digital files on a hard drive you’ll probably lose, or at least won’t look at after two or three week, you know having those images up on your wall to enjoy every day would be the best. But, many of my clients often wonder how large scale artwork will fit in with the modern minimalism that their home is styled in. So today, I want to share with you my 5 tips on how to style wall art for the minimalistic home! I’ll include some basic things to keep in mind, as well as some inspiration photos so you can start dreaming up how to display your family images and enjoy them every day!

Not entirely sure you need wall art? Check out this post on why your images deserve to be printed!

1. Choose the right location to suit your style

If you have a lot of negative space, an open concept and very neutral coloured furniture, you are not looking for a setting filled with tall trees and dark colours. You’ll want to pick a location for your family images that has offers an open feel and lots of negative space as well. The images that you turn into wall art for the minimalistic home needs to match that style. Fortunately, if you choose the right photographer, they’ll pick up on that immediately and have plenty of location ideas and options that suit this style and will work well with your decor.

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2. Choose the right outfits for your minimalistic style

As well as location, what you wear has to match the style of your decor as well. If you have virtually no colour in your home, now is not the time to wear deep olive and navy, no matter how gorgeous the colours may look. Pick a fairly neutral palette. If you want to add some colour, choose soft pastels like a blush, sage or light blue. If there’s a small colour pop in your home like a mustard blanket, or teal throw, you can work those colours in but keep the palette mostly neutral.

3. Choose the images that feel the most minimalistic

Select the images from your gallery that have the most negative space or neutral colours when choosing which to turn into wall art. If you opted to add colour to your wardrobe, a landscape image where the family is slightly smaller in the frame may be the best option. If your wardrobe was fairly light and soft, you can often select closer up images that better show off the expressions, connection and love in the images.

4. Opt to mat your wall art in your minimalistic home

One way to get that simple, minimalistic style is to add a mat to your image. I personally prefer no mat if the image has enough neutral colours and negative space since you can then choose not to add glass so that you’re not seeing your images through a glare.

5. Choose the right frame

The goal is that your images will become furniture in your home. You may swap them out for updated ones in a few years, but mostly, they’ll hang in the same spot for you to enjoy long-term. So keep the furniture around it, the tones and finishes in mind when choosing a frame. If you opt for mat and glass in your images, choose a thin frame that matches the finishes of your other furniture. If you prefer no mat or glass but still want to add to the negative space, a thick, simple white frame might be the best choice.

I hope these examples and tips have inspired you to go ahead and invest in the large scale wall art of your family images! I personally had a gallery wall of my children in small prints for years and recently opted to switch for more feature pieces instead. We went from hardly realizing the images were there, to enjoying them each and every day. On the hard days when my 5-year-old is acting like a 15-year-old or my toddler is melting down because I gave him the wrong cup, we walk past our images and they make us smile. They remind us of the beauty in our life on even the hardest, most mundane days as parents.

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