Artwork Above The Headboard? Yes or No?

Artwork above the: a concise orientation before we get practical.

Artwork above the: Quick notes

Matt and I have been in our new bedroom for two days now. It has been amazing to finally be sleeping in a proper bedroom. But also, I realized very quickly that having Matt in a room that I’m still working on and still needing to take “progress” pictures as I get stuff done is really putting a cramp in my whole blogging process that I’ve become accustomed to. Since I’m the one who signed up for this whole blogging thing, and Matt didn’t sign up for it or volunteer to be featured in pictures on my blog, that means I only have a small window of time (about three hours a day from 10:00am to 1:00pm) to take all of the pictures I want to take for my post the next day. I’m SO not used to that. I’m used to being able to take pictures all day long, right up until I turn the lights out and head to bed.

With that said, I have all of the bedding (minus one throw for the bed that I still want to make), and I had hoped to show that to y’all today. It looks SO GOOD in my humble opinion, and I was so excited to share that with y’all. But I couldn’t get it done in that three-hour window yesterday, so I’ll have to wait until tomorrow to share those updates with you.

So in the meantime, y’all can help me answer this question that has been nagging me ever since I got the bed set up two days ago. And that question is about artwork above the headboard. I generally love artwork or something decorative above a headboard. It doesn’t have to be a framed print. In our last bedroom, I used a big sunburst mirror above the bed, and I absolutely loved it.

But, of course, that bedroom was totally different from our current one. The headboard itself wasn’t really a feature, and it was much lower, leaving more wall space above it for the sunburst mirror. The bedding was also kind of plain. Instead of making the headboard and bedding the feature in that room, the wall was the feature, and that allowed me to hang something decorative above the headboard.

Our new bedroom is very different. In this room, the headboard and bedding (which I hope to get a picture of today) is the feature. Not only does it have decorative fabric on it, but it’s much taller and arched. That makes it much more difficult to put something above it, but I would still like to have something there…I think.

Ever since I put the grasscloth wallpaper up, I had been envisioning a set of three prints above the headboard. I even shared this picture with you a couple of months ago with that idea.

But now that the bed is in place, I’m having a hard time envisioning that. There’s only 27.5 inches between the top of the headboard and the crown molding, but I have this unwritten decorating rule that no artwork can be hung higher than the window or door trim, so that limits the available space even more. So I found a random picture online (definitely not the one that I would use, but I wanted to find something with orange in it) and did a quick mockup to see how that would look. I don’t love it. Of course, I could choose something with smaller artwork and more mat so that it doesn’t demand quite so much attention, but even at that, I’m not sure how I feel about the idea of three pictures hanging side-by-side above the arched headboard.

Of course, one small square picture looks ridiculous…

So if I do a framed, matted picture, something rectangular with a landscape configuration seems to fit the best, but I’m not sure if I like this. That seems way too high to hang a framed, matted picture. It almost seems comical to hang a picture so high on the wall to me.

So I think I’ve abandoned the idea of hanging any kind of framed and matted artwork above the headboard, but I still really want to hang something above the headboard. And I think I should also abandon the idea of finding anything square or rectangular. I think if I put anything on that wall, it needs to be a different shape altogether. So that made me think of possibly using a collection of small sunbursts that could be arranged around the arch of the headboard.

I just don’t know, and I’m kind of at a loss for ideas other than that one. Whatever I put there, I’d like to be more textural rather than a print that people feel like they need to get close to in order to see it since it won’t be possible to get close. I’d like something textural, shapely, and maybe a collection of something that can be hung around the arch of the headboard. So if you have any ideas other than a collection of small sunburst mirrors, I’d love to hear your ideas!

In the meantime, I’m going to try my hardest to get pictures of the bed all made up with the bedding and pillows while Matt is out of the bedroom today so that I can show y’all how it looks tomorrow. I’m so excited that I’m on the home stretch with this bedroom!!

More About Our Master Bedroom

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Addicted 2 Decorating is where I share my DIY and decorating journey as I remodel and decorate the 1948 fixer upper that my husband, Matt, and I bought in 2013. Matt has M.S. and is unable to do physical work, so I do the majority of the work on the house by myself. You can learn more about me here.

We reference Artwork above the briefly to keep the thread coherent.