Let's talk about the room.

We all have one. One room or wall that is looking tired and not ‘the way we want it.’ We see it every day and make a mental note to fix it but redecorating seems costly, time consuming...even totally overwhelming. It can be hard to know what you want to do with a space even when you know absolutely that what is there is not what you want.

So, you see that spot, it frustrates you, you make a mental note to do something about it but then in the rush of life it falls off the agenda...until the next time you clap eyes on it and the cycle repeats itself. I’m here to tell you that you don’t necessarily need new furniture or a completely new ‘look.’ There’s a reason why interior decorators exist - it is because most of us lack the time and the attention to colour and detail to be able to find and select just the right combination of pieces to make a room look magazine-worthy...but can I tell you a secret? You don’t need that expert skill set or an inflated budget to make a genuine difference to a pocket of your home. You just need some new art.

Art has the power to tie a room together and give it new life with very little effort and seeing art your love in your home will always give your spirits a lift. Art with heart brings that cozy, convivial hygge feeling in in a way adding more throw blankets (it’s summer in Australia, after all 🤦‍♀️) and throw cushions just can’t. (How many cushions will land on the floor from an exasperated husband who can’t stand them and then you will need to pick them up anyway...I don't know about your partner but throw cushions are a genuine bone of contention in our house...and I've come to realise as a mother of boys that they are, in fact, rather impractical after all.)

Soft furnishings or new furniture are often ‘prescribed’ as the solution to your redecorating woes. (Urgh - new furniture is expensive AND you have to put the old stuff on gumtree and wait for unreliable strangers to come get it. We have a couch in our front room from a year ago that I've been meaning to list - anyone in Brisbane need a yellow gingham ikea suite btw?)

I’m here to tell you that soft furnishings/different furniture are often lack lustre solutions. Work with what you have and choose some art to tie it together with similar colours but mainly? With something bright and warm and unique that you are just going to love to look at.

Sounds great but how do I redecorate with art, Clairebear?

So glad you asked. Take a look at the space in your home that is looking tired. Make a little list (on the notes section of your phone is great) of all the main colours already at play in the space. You might have light pink sheets on the bed for example and the bed might be a mid-tone wood finish. Make sure your list includes the wall colour, the furniture colour, the soft furnishings....

Armed with your list, have a look online (desktop computers are always great here so you can zoom in properly. If you're browsing our website, just mouse over the images for any art and you'll immediately get a blown up version - handy!) Find some pieces you love with some of the same tones in them as the room. They don't have to be 'dominant' colours in the art and they don't have to be an exact 'match' - just reminiscent of the colours you already have. If you have a room with lots of beige and there is a tiny bit of beige or a beige background to the artwork - it could work really well! Similarly, if you have some pink sheets and throw cushions, find a piece with a few different pink tones in it to be 'matchy but not' with your existing decor. Alternatively, if the room is decorated in neutral tones, you have a free pass to choose bold and exciting colours without limit - make the art a feature that focuses the eye in an otherwise bland and unfocused space. 

In any case, mixing and matching prints you love is often the ultimate personalised solution that best reflects your personality in your home. Our prints are beautiful on their own but when put together in combination? Magic. Whenever we make prints from original artworks, we carefully consider how they might interact with existing spaces and with other prints in our collection. There are plenty of popular artworks that we have considered making prints of but ultimately rejected because, whilst the art was great, the way it fit with our existing collection wasn't. Our aim with our print collection has always been that the pieces compliment each other so that you can choose a combination of artworks to sit together and create that 'interior designer' look with ease.

When I'm painting, I'm always careful to include some lighter, neutral tones and some earthy tones to mix in with furniture and walls in your home. Its the complexity of the colour blends that allows our art prints to fit in with so many different home decor styles - from ultra minimalist contemporary homes, to hamptons and country style homes. The soft organic forms, loose brush strokes and focus on compatible colour schemes (in art we call them palettes but same diff) are what, I think, makes The New Devine art so popular. It is so easy to combine prints that have been thoughtfully created. It just works.