Talking About Design. Photography in interior design

The role of gallery photography in interior design is very versatile. It can change space, create mood, convey feelings, express a person’s character and interests.

A leaf and a flower in water on a black background / Valery Vedrenko

A few years ago, landscape photography, still lives, and abstracts were considered suitable for interiors, but now conceptual photographs can also be seen as part of interior design.

Come and see / Asya Arakelian

Designers say that a photograph is a more flexible tool for decorating rooms than a painting and can fit more harmoniously into an interior. While a canvas is a fixed format and cannot be changed, a photograph can, thanks to technology and printing materials.

For instance, you can observe how organically the pictures by Valery Vedrenko, Elena Kimelfeld, and Asya Arakelian resonate with the rooms they are presented in. Pay attention to the way their colours either match the coloristic of the room or counteract it.

Winter details / Asya Arakelian

Photography is often more expensive than canvas and oil, and the work of a photographer is no less complex than that of a painter.

Here are a few design tricks that can be used to alter the visual impact of a room by using different ways of displaying photographs on the walls.

• A narrow and elongated room can appear shorter if a single large, brightly coloured photograph is placed on the end wall.
• Light shades make the room look larger, while darker shades make it look shorter.
• To visually increase the height of the ceiling, images should be placed vertically.
• Horizontal positioning of the photographs will visually increase the length of the wall.
• Symmetrical images would create an effect of stability. Asymmetric would add a sense of dynamics to the interior.
• Equal size photos would convey the business-like atmosphere of the office.

New in Old / Elena Kimelfeld

The photographs in an interior would be very well combined with graphics and sculpture. It is also possible to bring together all the elements with a common theme.