What this site is
Room Paintings gathers famous paintings that their museums have placed in the public domain, and sorts them the way a decorator thinks: by room first, then by wall color, size and shape, subject, style and artist.
Each painting has its own page with a large image, its main colors, the rooms it suits, the print and frame sizes that keep its proportions, a to-scale preview on a wall, and a link to the museum’s own record of the work.
Who it is for
- People decorating one room who want to see a painting in place and know what size to print.
- Do-it-yourself decorators who print at home or at a print shop and need a large, legally clear image.
- Interior designers, home stagers and short-term rental hosts who need many pieces quickly, with no licensing worries.
- Art lovers, teachers and students who like to browse by mood, color or subject rather than by period.
Where the images come from
Every image is published by the museum that owns the painting, through the museum’s open-access program, under Creative Commons Zero (CC0). The large image on each painting page comes straight from the museum’s own servers, the small previews are our copies of the museum’s files, and every painting links to the museum’s page for the work. The paintings come from these collections:
- National Gallery of Art, Washington: 980 paintings, through its open-access program
- The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York: 941 paintings, through its open-access program
- Art Institute of Chicago: 347 paintings, through its open-access program
- Cleveland Museum of Art: 232 paintings, through its open-access program
The National Gallery of Art in Washington is the largest source, and the set from the Cleveland Museum of Art is the smallest. What CC0 lets you do with these images is set out on the image license page.
How rooms are matched
A painting is suggested for a room by a few plain rules and a person’s eye:
- Scale. The painting’s shape and the print sizes it fits, against the furniture that usually anchors the room: a sofa, a bed, a dining table, a mantel.
- Color. The painting’s main colors against 24 common wall colors, so you can find work that echoes your wall or stands out against it.
- Subject. Still lifes and harvests for dining rooms, calm landscapes for bedrooms, water and botanicals for bathrooms, and so on.
- Hand curation. We add, move and leave out paintings by looking at them. A rule can’t tell a stormy sea from a calm one; a person can.
Sizes and measurements
Sizes are in inches first and centimeters second. Hanging advice follows common gallery practice: the center of the art 57 to 60 inches from the floor, the bottom of the frame 6 to 10 inches above furniture, and the art about two-thirds as wide as the furniture beneath it.
Nothing is sold here
Room Paintings holds no stock and sells no prints, frames or paintings. The images are free to use, and you can print them wherever you like. How we handle visits to this site is on the privacy page.