A bedroom asks something of art that no other room does: it has to work when you are lying down. That single fact changes the size, the height and often the subject, and it is why bedroom walls so often look almost right rather than right.
Bed width decides the size
Art above a bed should span about two thirds of the bed. European beds come in three standard widths, and each has a clean answer.
| Bed width | Target span | What works |
|---|---|---|
| 140 cm | ~93 cm | One 70×100, or two 50×70 side by side (104 cm) |
| 160 cm | ~107 cm | Two 50×70, or one 100×140 turned landscape |
| 180 cm | ~120 cm | Two 70×100 side by side (144 cm), or three 50×70 |
A single 50×70 above a 160 cm bed is the most frequent mistake in the room. It covers a third of the bed and reads as an afterthought. If that is the size you want, buy two. Every format is listed in the poster size guide.
Measure from the headboard, not the floor
The usual advice — centre the art at 145 cm — assumes an empty wall. Above a bed it does not apply, because the headboard has already taken the lower half.
Leave 15 to 25 cm of bare wall between the top of the headboard and the bottom of the frame. Below 15 cm the art looks like it is resting on the bed. Above 25 cm it floats free and stops belonging to the furniture. On every other wall in the room, the standard height holds — that is covered in how high to hang art.
Peacock by Ohara Koson japansk kunstposter
Fashion Brands Poster
Curiosity - Maarten Léon
Maddies Mood - Jotadejai
Cat in Window Poster
Tree of Life Collage - Thomas Nordentoft
Nothing heavy directly overhead
Worth saying plainly: a 100×140 in glass above a bed is a lot of weight above a sleeping person. If you want that size in a bedroom, hang it on the opposite wall, and keep the wall above the bed to paper prints in lighter frames. It is also the wall you see last at night, which is an argument for something calm rather than something clever.
One piece usually beats six
A bedroom is a room you enter to stop thinking. A busy arrangement of six frames works against that, and it is the room where a single large piece most reliably outperforms a gallery wall.
If you do want several, keep to two or three in one row, centred on the bed, with equal gaps. Align the centres of the frames rather than their tops — frames of different heights look wrong hung by the top edge. Twelve arrangements with exact measurements are in the gallery wall guide.
Frames for a room with the lights low
Bedrooms are lit softly and often from one side. Glass picks that up as a bright patch, so a lamp directly opposite a framed print will reflect straight back at the bed. Move the lamp, angle the frame slightly, or hang on the wall the lamp sits beside rather than opposite.
Oak suits the room better than black in most cases — it reads warmer under low light. Both come in all five sizes; see the the frames in every size.
Choosing the print
Everything that suits the wall above a bed, and the walls around it, is in the bedroom selection.