Walls Feeling a Bit Empty? Here Are Some Great Ways To Decorate!

Large blank walls can be a bit intimidating to decorate that’s for sure! I love the new ideas of using old windows and canvas prints to cover large spans as well as also using unique paint techniques! Here we’ve used everything from old windows to my Grandma’s heirloom quilt to spruce up our living room’s big walls but there are so many other fun and interesting ways to decorate.

(This is a contributed post, for more information about my compensation please read my disclosure policy)

Decorating your home can be a lot of fun because you get to freely express yourself with lots of different objects, colours, and styles. However, one of the most common issues that people face is deciding what to do with a large blank wall. With so much space on the wall, it can often look a little boring or plain if you just leave it as is. But walls can actually be used in many creative ways. So here are a couple of suggestions on what you can do to transform an empty wall.

Start with a wallpaper or paint colour that matches the rest of your room

So before you do anything, we’d highly suggest that you start by choosing a wallpaper style or colour to paint your walls so it matches the rest of your room. Once you start decorating your walls and drilling in shelves, you’re going to have a hard time changing the colours again because you’ll need to remove everything from the shelves and disassemble them.

You can look for more info on different kinds of wallpaper styles if you want to add a pattern or texture to the wall, or you can do a bit of research on colour theory and groups so that you can choose something that is relatively neutral. Having a neutral colour scheme means that you’ll be able to change up other aspects of your room such as the upholstery without negatively impacting the overall look and feel of your rooms.

Once you’ve decided on a colour scheme, you can then move on to the other steps below to actually decorate your large walls or even add some functionality to them.

Adding shelving to increase storage options in your home

Perhaps one of the easiest ways to decorate and add functionality to your walls is to add a few shelves. Shelving is the perfect option because it’s extremely practical for both decorative and storage purposes. You can add all kinds of pictures and flora such as potted plants to the shelf and it’s very simple to just remove something that you don’t want or if you want to change something. There’s no commitment when it comes to adding a shelf (other than installing the shelf itself!) and there are plenty of great shelving options available.

For instance, you can try floating shelves if you want to maintain a minimalistic look throughout your rooms. Alternatively, you could have shelves with very fancy and decorative brackets that you can use to hang plants and other kinds of decorations. While they can look a bit distracting at times, it’s actually a fantastic way to compliment the overall style and feel of your room if you can find unique brackets.

Adding a large painting or decorative tapestry

One of the easiest ways to fill up a large space in an empty wall is to actually use a tapestry or a large painting. There are plenty of unique options for tapestries and you can often get interesting designs depending on where you look. You can hang them in many different ways and you can get creative as well. For instance, you can look in thrift stores for larger curtains and blankets that have interesting patterns then hang them up against your wall.

Creating a DIY tapestry isn’t difficult and you can get creative with different kinds of materials, messages, colours, and patterns. You can use almost anything to make a wall hanging decoration and there’s no limit to the type of material or design that you have in mind. While you can always just buy some kind of tapestry or wall-hanging design, it might be a lot more fun to make something of your own because it’ll be personal to you and completely custom. This is what can give your rooms that unique feel that completes your interior design and makes it stand out from everything else.

The difficult thing here is ensuring that it fits with the rest of your room without looking too gaudy or out of place. We highly recommend that you try to match the colours so that they are at least fairly consistent. When in doubt, using neutral colours is always a good idea because you don’t need to invest too much time into picking the right colour combinations, and it ensures that the same wall hanger or decoration can work in other rooms too.

The other option is to hang art in your rooms. There are a couple of simple tips to follow here, such as always having a frame to protect the art and ensuring that the main focus of the artwork is at eye level. This makes it more pleasing to see in the room and is actually a great tip for figuring out the height that you want to hang it. You want your eyes to immediately gaze at the focal point of the art that you’re using instead of forcing you to look up or down just to see what the artwork is. You also don’t want to cover it, so try and place it on a bare wall without anything underneath it such as a drawer or desk that could have items on it.

Lastly, the other option you could try is actually hanging a rug. Rugs are great because they usually have lots of unique decorative patterns and they’re fairly easy to hang up despite how heavy some of them can be. We suggest taking a look at various rugs on the internet or in stores to see what designs you can pick out.

Personalising your wall with memorabilia and collectables

One of the more unique and personal ways to use a blank wall is to have a lot of memorabilia on it. This can include photo frames with your favourite pictures, it can include travel items that you’ve gathered over the years or even a wall dedicated to all of your concert tickets or newspaper articles that you’re in.

There are many memorabilia ideas that you can add to your wall and it doesn’t need to be limited to your past. For example, if you’re a collector then you can showcase some of your most prized goods. This can include movie posters, video game displays, action figures, or even a collection of clocks. There are so many ways to personalise your walls using memorabilia and collectables and it’s a fantastic way to truly inject your own interests into your rooms. This can be extremely fun to do with a games room, hobby room, or even a bedroom. However, your family members might not appreciate you covering a wall in the living room with all of your favourite things!

Create contrast using different textures

Another amazing way to turn a boring plain wall into something more spectacular is to use different textures. This is a common technique in minimalist homes because it brings attention to the wall since it differs from the floor and other walls in the room. This is generally done for recessed walls and alcoves because it helps them stand out, but it can just as easily be used for a regular wall if you want.

Some ideas for wall textures include brick wallpaper, vinyl tiles for different stones, or even a wooden texture if the rest of your walls are fairly plain. We generally don’t suggest using more than one type of texture because it can be a little loud and jarring at times. Ideally, you’ll want to keep it isolated to a single room in the home and you don’t want to mix and match the different styles too much. It’s great to start with a single wall in a large room such as the living room.

Creating contrast using textures can be a difficult design choice to master, but once you’ve gotten used to how this technique can be used, it’s arguably one of the simplest and cheapest ways to decorate a large blank wall. The great thing about this tip is that you can still use the walls in conjunction with the rest of these tips, such as adding a shelf to it or even hanging paintings. If you want to go the extra mile, you can use the real material (such as laying bricks or adding wooden boards to the wall) instead of imitation wallpaper and tiles.

Conclusion

Hopefully, this article has given you a bunch of ideas to help you brighten up your walls and make better use of all that space. While most of these projects won’t take much time to complete, it’s always a good idea to set aside a weekend to ensure that you can complete the project without rushing it. But if you’re ever in doubt of your DIY ability, it’s never a bad idea to hire a professional to help you or even contact a friend or relative to give you a hand with it.

(This is a contributed post, for more information about my compensation please read my disclosure policy)