Abstract & Textured Wall Art

Most canvas art you can buy online is a flat print. The texture you see is photographed, not felt. Ours is the other way round. 

Each piece starts as poly-cotton canvas, then a gel medium is applied and worked by hand to build up ridges, peaks and brushstrokes across the surface. The result is genuine relief, and because it is done by hand, no two pieces come out identical. Run your fingers across one and you can feel where the artist's brush has lifted and dragged. 

The depth is what makes it read as 3D rather than simply textured. At 4cm, these sit noticeably off the wall, so the raised areas cast small shadows that shift as daylight moves through the room. Morning light picks out different ridges to an evening lamp. A flat print cannot do that, which is why textured art holds interest in a way a poster does not. 

It also means lighting matters. Hang one where it gets some angled light, from a window to the side or a lamp below, rather than flat-on overhead light that flattens the surface out. 

Getting the scale right matters more than getting the design right. An undersized piece on a large wall looks like an afterthought no matter how good the artwork is. 

The working rule is that your art should span roughly two-thirds to three-quarters of the furniture it sits above. Over a three-seater sofa of about 210cm, that puts you at 140cm to 160cm wide, so a 100x150cm piece hung in landscape works well. Over a queen bed, similar. Over a console or a smaller two-seater, an 80x80cm square is usually enough. 

Our four sizes cover most situations. 80x80cm suits compact walls, hallways and gallery groupings. 105x105cm is a larger square for a feature wall where you want presence without going oversized. 100x150cm is the all-rounder for above a sofa or bed. 120x180cm is our large wall art option for big open-plan walls and double-height spaces where anything smaller would disappear. 

Height is simpler. Centre the piece at about 145cm from the floor, which is roughly eye level for most people, or 15cm to 20cm above the back of a sofa. 

Three layers do the work. 

The poly-cotton canvas is the base. It holds the gel medium without sagging and resists the stretching that pure cotton can develop over time in a humid room. 

Behind it sits a solid pine inner frame . This is the structural part, holding the canvas taut and square so the artwork does not ripple or bow as the timber responds to seasonal humidity. 

Around the outside is a lightweight polystyrene outer frame, so every piece arrives as framed wall art rather than a bare canvas. Using polystyrene rather than solid timber for the visible frame is a deliberate choice. It keeps the overall weight down, which matters a great deal on a wall. An 80x80cm piece weighs 3.5kg, light enough for ordinary plasterboard fixings rather than a stud or a masonry anchor. 

A metal hanger comes already fitted to the back, so there is nothing to assemble and no hardware to source. Unpack it, put a hook in the wall and hang it. Every piece carries a three-year warranty .  

In a living room, the wall above the sofa is the obvious spot and usually the right one. Keep the artwork within the width of the sofa rather than overhanging it, and leave 15cm to 20cm of clear wall between the top of the sofa back and the bottom of the frame. If you have a coffee table or a TV unit in a strong timber tone, a neutral textured piece will sit alongside it without competing. 

In a bedroom, centre the art on the bed rather than the wall. Those rarely line up, and the eye reads the bed as the anchor. A single large piece above a bedhead tends to look calmer than a cluster, which is worth knowing if the room is somewhere you want to feel restful. 

For a gallery wall, use pieces of the same size and keep 5cm to 10cm between frames. Lay everything on the floor first and shuffle it around before you put a single hole in the wall. Because these are textured rather than printed, a group of three in the same neutral palette still reads as varied, where three identical prints would look flat. 

Elsewhere, hallways and stairwells suit the 80x80cm square, and a home office wall behind a desk is an easy win on video calls. Browse the rest of our home decor range if you want to pull a scheme together.