Bedroom art prints are one of the most overlooked opportunities in home decorating. The bedroom is the most overlooked room when it comes to art. People spend real energy on their living rooms — the gallery wall, the statement sofa, the carefully chosen throw pillows — and then leave their bedroom walls bare or hung with something they bought as an afterthought.
This is worth fixing. The bedroom is the first thing you see in the morning and the last thing you see at night. The art on your walls shapes the emotional quality of that room every single day. Getting it right matters more than most people realize.
Here is a practical guide to choosing, sizing, and hanging bedroom art prints — built for Canadian homes and real budgets.
Start With the Mood You Want to Wake Up To
Before you think about size or style, think about feeling. What do you want your bedroom to feel like?
The bedroom is a private space — unlike the living room, you are not performing it for guests. This gives you more freedom. But it also means the art you choose here has to work for you and your partner specifically, not for anyone else.
Calm and restorative. If you want the bedroom to feel like a retreat, look for art with soft colour palettes, gentle subject matter, and open composition. Soft abstract washes, muted botanical prints, quiet nature photography, or serene landscape prints all work here. Avoid high-contrast compositions or very busy abstract art — these are visually stimulating, which is not what you want when you are trying to wind down.
Romantic and warm. Warm-toned art — soft golds, blush pinks, dusty roses, burnt terracotta — creates intimacy. Figurative art, impressionistic florals, or prints with a sense of warmth and softness suit bedrooms oriented toward this feeling. Pair with warm lamp lighting and soft textiles for maximum effect.
Sophisticated and minimal. For those who prefer a cleaner aesthetic, the bedroom can carry one strong piece of art and leave everything else quiet. A large, simple black-and-white photograph or a single bold abstract print above the bed reads as confident and considered in a way that a gallery wall simply cannot replicate.
Personal and expressive. The bedroom is the one room where it is perfectly appropriate to have art that means something specific to you — a print connected to travel, a favourite artist, a colour that you have loved since childhood. Here, personal meaning takes precedence over design rules.
The Above-Bed Placement: The Most Important Wall in the Room
The wall above the bed is the focal point of the bedroom. Everything else organizes around it. Getting this placement right has a disproportionate impact on how the whole room feels.
Size Guidelines
The most common mistake is hanging art that is too small. Above a queen or king bed, a single piece should be at least 70–75% of the width of the headboard. For a queen (typically 60 inches / 152 cm wide), this means at least 42–45 inches (107–114 cm) wide. For a king (76 inches / 193 cm), aim for 55–60 inches (140–152 cm) minimum.
If you are using a pair of prints rather than a single piece, together they should still span the same width, with a gap of 2–4 inches (5–10 cm) between them. Matching pairs — the same image in different orientations, or two pieces from the same series — work especially well here.
Height
Hang the bottom of the artwork 6–8 inches (15–20 cm) above the headboard. This is the sweet spot that connects the art to the bed without crowding it. If you have very high ceilings, you can go slightly higher, but always maintain that visual connection between the bed and the art above it.
Gallery Wall Above the Bed
A bedroom gallery wall is more contained than a living room gallery — typically 5–9 pieces rather than 12–20. Keep the palette tighter (2–3 colours maximum), maintain consistent framing (the same frame finish across all pieces works extremely well in bedrooms), and aim for visual balance rather than the intentional asymmetry that works in a living room.
Lay it out on the floor before you pick up a hammer. Take a photo from above. You will see immediately whether it works.
The Second Wall: Dresser, Wardrobe, or Reading Corner
After the bed wall, the next most common placement for bedroom art prints is above a dresser or a low console. The same size rules apply: the art should be approximately two-thirds the width of the furniture beneath it.
This is a good place for smaller prints — 16×20 or 18×24 — especially if you want to keep visual emphasis on the bed wall. Repeating the same subject matter or colour palette from the bed wall art ties the room together without feeling repetitive.
Reading corners deserve art too. A small print or a pair of prints hung at seated eye level next to a reading chair makes the corner feel intentional and complete. This is one of the most underused placement opportunities in any bedroom.
Colour Strategy for Bedroom Art
Bedroom art colours should be chosen in conversation with your bedding and wall colour — not in isolation. Colour psychology backs this up: colours that echo each other across a room’s surfaces create a sense of harmony that makes the space feel calm and intentional.
The most reliable approach: pull one colour from your bedding or a textile in the room, and choose art that features that colour prominently. This does not mean a perfect match — it means resonance. A dusty sage in your linen duvet cover finds its echo in a botanical print with muted green tones. A warm terracotta wall plays beautifully against an abstract with amber and golden undertones.
If your bedroom is predominantly neutral (white, grey, beige), you have the most freedom. This is the room where a single bold-coloured print has the most impact — it becomes the colour anchor for everything else.
Choosing Subjects for Bedroom Art Prints
Botanicals and florals. Perennially suited to bedrooms because they are simultaneously beautiful and calming. A large-scale botanical print brings the outdoors inside without any of the visual noise. Soft watercolour florals are particularly effective at creating a restful, romantic atmosphere.
Abstract art with gentle palettes. Abstract bedroom art prints are not just for living rooms. In the bedroom, a soft abstract — colour field washes, gentle layered textures, or loosely geometric compositions in muted tones — can be more effective than representational art at creating a specific mood without being too literal about it.
Fine art photography. Black-and-white photography in particular suits the bedroom very well. A strong architectural photograph, a nature scene, or an artistic portrait brings sophistication without colour complexity. It is also extremely versatile — a good B&W photograph will work in almost any bedroom regardless of the existing colour scheme.
Landscapes and nature. Calming by nature (literally and figuratively), landscape art brings a sense of depth and openness to a bedroom. A wide-format landscape print above a low bed creates a sense of horizon that makes even a small bedroom feel more spacious.
Shop Bedroom Art Prints at artGalore.ca
artGalore.ca has a full range of art prints suited to every bedroom style — from serene botanicals and soft abstracts to dramatic fine art photography and timeless classical prints.
→ Browse floral and botanical art prints
The Room You Never Thought to Finish
Most people treat the bedroom as a lower priority than the living room or kitchen when it comes to decorating. But you spend more time in your bedroom than anywhere else in your home. The quality of that space — the feeling it creates, the visual environment it offers — matters for how you sleep, how you wake up, and how you move through each day.
Bedroom art prints are the fastest, most affordable, and most reversible way to transform a bedroom. One well-chosen print can change the entire character of the room. It is worth taking the time to choose it well.