Wolf Painting

A wolf painting is the piece that changes a room fastest, and the deepest group in our decor range by a wide margin. It is also the one where the two most common mistakes are entirely avoidable: buying too small, and not noticing whether a frame is included.

Both of those are settled before you even look at the artwork, so it is worth dealing with them first and then choosing a design with a clear head.

Framed or unframed, and what you actually receive

Most pieces here are offered two ways, and the difference matters more than the price gap suggests.

The framed option arrives ready to hang. Nothing else to buy, nothing to assemble, and the piece goes on the wall the day it arrives. For most buyers this is the right choice simply because the alternative involves a trip to a framer and a second cost that usually exceeds the artwork.

The unframed option is a simple canvas. It suits two situations. The first is when you already have a frame you want to reuse, which is common when replacing existing art. The second is when you want something oversized, since large framed pieces are expensive to ship and a rolled canvas is not.

What an unframed canvas is not is ready to hang. It will need stretching over a frame or mounting before it goes up, and factoring that in avoids disappointment on arrival.

Sizing a wolf painting to the wall

This is where most people go wrong, and they go wrong in one direction. Art bought online is almost always too small, because a product photograph gives no sense of scale.

The working rule for a piece above furniture is that it should span roughly two thirds of the width of whatever sits beneath it. Above a standard sofa, that pushes most people to a considerably larger size than instinct suggests. A piece that looks generous on screen can look stranded on a wall.

Sizes here run from 35x50cm at the smaller end, through 45x60cm and 60x80cm, up to 75x100cm. Small, medium and large options cover the same ground on many designs. If you are hesitating between two sizes, take the larger one. An oversized piece reads as confident, while an undersized one reads as an accident, and the price difference is rarely the deciding factor a year later.

For an empty wall with no furniture below it, measure the wall and aim to fill somewhere between half and two thirds of the usable width.

The styles across the range

Four directions cover most of what is here, and they suit very different rooms.

Landscape and forest

The animal placed in an environment rather than isolated. The Painting Wolf Snowy Forest and the Painting Wolf Lying On The Snow sit here. These are the most neutral pieces in the range and the easiest to live with over years, because the composition carries the image rather than the confrontation of a face.

Lunar and night

The most recognisable wolf imagery there is. The Painting White Wolf Moonlight and the Painting Wolf Pack In The Night use strong contrast, which makes them the pieces that read best from across a room or in low light.

Fantasy and figurative

The Wolf Painting Fantasy and the Painting Wolf Fantastic Girl introduce a narrative element. These are more specific in taste and suit a room where the art is meant to be the focal point rather than part of a scheme.

Simple and graphic

The Simple Wolf Painting Winter and the Baby Wolf Cub Painting keep the palette narrow. These work well in rooms that already have a lot going on, and the cub designs are the ones most often bought for children's rooms.

Hanging height and the light on it

Two practical points that make a bought piece look properly placed rather than merely attached.

Hang so the centre of the artwork sits at roughly eye level, which for most rooms means the middle of the piece around a hundred and forty five centimetres from the floor. Above furniture, leave a hand's width between the top of the sofa or console and the bottom of the frame. Art hung too high is the single most common error in a decorated room and it is instantly noticeable once you know to look.

Consider the light. A canvas facing a window will get glare across it for part of the day, and a dark lunar composition suffers most from that. If the only available wall faces a window, the lighter forest and winter pieces hold up considerably better.

Direct sunlight will fade any print over years. It is not a reason to avoid a sunny wall, but it is a reason not to hang your favourite piece in the brightest spot in the house.

Building a wall rather than hanging one piece

A single large piece is the easiest way to get this right, and it is what we would suggest for most rooms.

If you want a group, use one large piece with two smaller ones rather than three of the same size, and keep consistent spacing of a few centimetres between them. Matching frames across a group does more for coherence than matching subjects does.

For a softer approach to the same wall, our wolf wall stickers collection covers designs that need no fixings at all and come away cleanly, which suits rented rooms.

To carry the theme into textiles rather than more wall space, our wolf blanket collection and our wolf pillow case collection both work alongside art without competing with it. And our wolf decor collection holds the full range for the room.