A room can be almost finished and still have a blank wall. You know roughly how much space there is. Perhaps you have a colour in mind. But choosing the picture itself can feel harder than choosing everything around it.

Start by looking at what holds your attention. Is it a stretch of quiet water, a sweeping curve, a burst of yellow or a face that seems to look back? That first response gives you something more useful than a list of decorating rules.

These four works from our catalogue offer different starting points. Each has a distinct character, and each suggests a way to think about where a print might belong. The room suggestions are ours; the artwork histories come from the museums that hold the originals.

1. Look for breathing space: Monet’s Water Lilies

Claude Monet’s Water Lilies, 1906: pink flowers and green lily pads across blue, violet and green water.
Claude Monet, Water Lilies, 1906. Art Institute of Chicago.

The open water is the first thing to notice in this painting. Lily pads gather around it, but much of the centre remains a loose meeting of blue, green and violet. Small pink flowers give your eye somewhere to pause before it wanders again.

Try covering the flowers with your hand for a moment. The reflections still make an absorbing picture. That is part of its appeal: there is no single object you have to keep looking at, and no sharply drawn horizon dividing the scene.

In a room with patterned cushions, books or plenty of objects on display, we would consider this a quieter point of attention. Its softly shifting colours could sit comfortably beside pale wood or linen. You might echo one of the greens elsewhere, but there is no need to match every shade.

Before choosing, look at it from across the room on your screen, then move closer. If you enjoy both the broad colour and the scattered details, it is worth keeping on your shortlist.

Monet’s Water Lilies in an oak frame above a linen sofa, with patterned green and violet cushions and books.
Soft linen, patterned cushions and books surround Monet’s open water, giving the eye somewhere quieter to settle.

View the Water Lilies print · Artwork record at the Art Institute of Chicago

2. Choose a strong shape: Hokusai’s The Great Wave

Katsushika Hokusai’s The Great Wave: a curling blue wave above three boats, with Mount Fuji in the distance.
Katsushika Hokusai, The Great Wave, about 1830–32. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Follow the outer edge of the wave. It climbs, curls and breaks into fine fingers of foam. Beneath it, the boats form long, narrow diagonals. Mount Fuji is a small triangle held within the much larger movement of the sea.

Hokusai made this woodblock print as part of Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji. The Met points out his play with perspective: the mountain appears tiny within the hollow of the wave. Knowing that changes the picture slightly. A work remembered for its sea is also asking us to look at something almost lost behind it.

This is a useful choice to consider when you want a picture that reads clearly from a doorway or the far side of a room. The dark blue curve gives it a strong outline, while the boats and foam reward a closer look.

We would give it enough clear wall space for that outline to stand out. In a group of prints, try it beside a quieter composition rather than surrounding it with equally forceful shapes. Let the wave supply the movement.

Hokusai’s The Great Wave above a dark wood console, viewed through a bright hallway doorway.
Seen across a hallway, the wave’s strong curve holds its own against clear wall space and a simple console.

View The Great Wave print · Artwork record at The Met

3. Let colour lead: Van Gogh’s Wheat Field with Cypresses

Vincent van Gogh’s Wheat Field with Cypresses: golden wheat, dark green trees and rolling white clouds in a blue sky.
Vincent van Gogh, Wheat Field with Cypresses, 1889. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The yellow wheat catches the eye, but the dark cypresses give this painting its weight. Their upright forms interrupt the rolling bands of field, hills and clouds. Even the sky seems to have a texture you could follow with your fingertips.

Van Gogh painted this version outdoors at Saint-Rémy in 1889. The Met records that he later made two studio versions of the composition. Our featured work is the Met painting, with its densely worked surface and restless summer sky.

For a room that feels a little subdued, this would be our colour-led starting point. The painting already brings together warm yellow, cool blue and several greens. You could pick up the wheat’s warmth in a wooden table, or let the blue speak to a chair or curtain you already own.

Look beyond the brightest colour before deciding. The deep green trees are just as useful when thinking about a room: they can connect a lively picture to darker furniture or foliage. Choose the relationship you like, then leave the rest of the room free to be itself.

Van Gogh’s Wheat Field with Cypresses above a golden wood sideboard beside a blue chair and green foliage.
Golden wood, a muted blue chair and dark green foliage pick up different parts of Van Gogh’s palette.

View the Wheat Field with Cypresses print · Artwork record at The Met

4. Make room for a face: Van Gogh’s Self-Portrait with a Straw Hat

Vincent van Gogh’s Self-Portrait with a Straw Hat: a direct gaze beneath a yellow hat, built from short strokes of contrasting colour.
Vincent van Gogh, Self-Portrait with a Straw Hat, 1887. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

A portrait asks for a different kind of attention. Here, your eye finds Van Gogh’s gaze almost immediately. Stay with the picture and the face starts to separate into strokes: green beside red, yellow beside blue, small marks turning around the cheek and forehead.

The Met explains that Van Gogh made more than twenty self-portraits during his years in Paris. With little money for models, he used himself as a sitter. This 1887 painting turns that practical solution into a concentrated study of colour and expression.

We would consider it for a place where you often pause: beside a reading chair, near a desk or on a wall you pass at close range. Its vertical composition also offers a different option from the wider sweep of the wheat field or Hokusai’s wave.

If you are choosing a pair, compare this portrait with Wheat Field with Cypresses. Yellow and blue recur in both, but the subjects and rhythms differ. Together they offer a connection you can see without requiring two pictures to look alike.

Van Gogh’s Self-Portrait with a Straw Hat beside a leather reading chair, books and a blue cushion.
A portrait beside a reading chair invites a closer look at the face and the individual strokes of colour.

View the Self-Portrait with a Straw Hat print · Artwork record at The Met

Bring your shortlist into the room

Once you have two or three favourites, look at them where you plan to hang them. Stand at the doorway, sit in your usual chair and notice which picture still draws you in. Monet’s open water and Hokusai’s curling wave contain plenty of blue, yet their effect is quite different. Colour alone will not make the decision for you.

Check the dimensions of your chosen print and frame, then mark out the overall size on the wall with paper. Remember that paper size, image size and outside frame size are different measurements. A picture that feels generous on a product page may look much smaller above a wide piece of furniture.

Finally, return to the artwork. Find one detail you would enjoy seeing tomorrow: a pink flower on the water, Fuji beneath the wave, a turn in the clouds or a green stroke across a painted face. That is a good reason to give a picture a place in your home.

Explore all prints at Mayfair Prints

Room scenes are AI-generated illustrations with the original catalogue artwork placed into the frames. Frame styles and scale are illustrative.

If Turner’s seascapes and Venetian views appeal to you, explore our illustrated guide to Turner paintings for the stories and details behind ten works.