Learn to Decorate Your Living Room with ADG Poster Art September 07, 2022

It’s easier than you think to decorate your living room with poster art. (Often, our prints are called vintage-styled art or travel poster art, due to our timeless, classic vibe.) Whatever you call the result of our artistic passion, it is definitely unique wall art! Read this guide for quick tips on making your home decor pop with our original illustrations, coffee table books, art prints, and more.

Living Room Styling Tips

Since Anderson Design Group’s founding in 2007, our poster artists have composed 31 art collections (and counting) comprising over 2,000 original illustrations. From our award-winning 63 American National Parks Collection to our iconic American Travel Collection, dreamy Coastal Collection, and feel-good Southern Delight Collection, these assortments of vintage-styled poster art give you endless options in wall decor for your living room, dining room, kitchen, bedroom, or bathroom.

You might want to jump in and start choosing art to decorate your living room, but we recommend following a few basic living room styling tips before you do. For example, it’s always a good idea to pick a living room theme and stick with it. It might sound like fun to have one wall decorated with abstract art and another wall decorated with vintage poster art, but the result is a complicated design palette, i.e., there’s “too much going on.” The result? The viewer leaves feeling a little overwhelmed.

Another industry tip is to get creative with what you consider decor. More on this later, but something novel like a hardcover coffee table book can be a conversation starter, an enjoyable read, and a decor piece all in one! Coffee table books look great on top of a coffee table, and given that coffee tables are usually in the center or near-center of the living room, such furniture items get a lot of visual attention.

Another living room decor strategy is to go beyond what looks good and expand on what feels good. Many ADG customers like to create “bucket list walls” of places they’d like to visit. Similarly, some customers have decorated their living rooms with ADG poster art of all the places they’ve been to as a way to commemorate their American Travel or World Travel journeys.

Choose an Art Medium that Matches Your Style

Beyond choosing what to decorate with, there is immense importance in how you decorate. For this reason, Anderson Design Group offers its original art in various mediums. Some room styles with cabin, cottage, or lodge vibes might be more suited to metal signs. Rooms that are more contemporary or modern may be better suited to art prints. Canvas prints might better suit more classical or traditional decor styles. Space-restricted areas like studio apartments would look better with mini-canvases.

Anderson Design Group offers living room art in the following mediums:

Art prints. Ready-to-frame or available for purchase with a pre-framed option, ADG art prints are produced with state-of-the-art digital printing methods on acid-free, gallery-grade paper. While our illustrated prints look like vintage poster art from the early 20th Century, they are all original creations that we have made available in four ideal sizes to fit any wall space.

Canvas prints. For a more classic touch, ADG’s Premium Gallery Wrapped Canvas prints are custom-made-to-order using archival inks on gallery-grade canvas material. They are finished with a semi-matte protective UV coating and then wrapped over a 1.5” deep frame. They are shipped ready-to-hang.

Mini canvases. Folks who want to decorate a studio apartment, small condo, tiny home, or college dorm will love these. Perfect for little spaces like desks, mantels, and shelves, ADG’s easel-backed mini canvases are hand-crafted and made to order. They are available in 5” x 7” and 8” x 10”.

Metal signs. Rugged and retro, metal signs are a great way to decorate a living room when one is going for a more vintage, woodsy, cabin, or cottage vibe. ADG’s metal signs are printed with weatherproof inks on a rust-resistant tin. A hole is drilled into each corner to make hanging a cinch.

Notecards. Strategically placing a notecard on a living room mantle or windowsill goes a long way toward decorating a space, especially if the notecard embodies a similar style as the living room wall art and decor. One could take this decor idea a step further and write a personal note or special, secret message inside the notecard, so anyone who lifts it off the mantle to examine it further would see the note.

Postcards. While people mail ADG’s postcards back and forth all the time, some think of these beauties as pocket-sized posters and decorate with them! Savvy decorators can use the postcards to make a gallery wall of vintage-styled art, travel destinations, inspiration collages, natural spaces and parks, southern comforts, and mod or art deco designs.

Finally, ADG customers will sometimes combine numerous art products for the living room by decorating with, say, 18” x 24” art prints on the walls, then using a metal sign or two on the fireplace or chimney. Others will use the Gallery Wall option (more on that later) to strategically decorate a living room wall.

Coffee Table Books are a Great Living Room Centerpiece

As mentioned earlier, coffee table books are a great way to add a unique decor accent to a living room. Anderson Design Group’s 63 National Parks: Updated Edition Hard Cover Coffee Table Book measures 9” x 12” and is chock full of stunning original illustrations of the 63 American National Parks. The book also has new photos, hiking tips, fun facts about the parks, oil paintings, historical photos, a map of the USA, travel tips, and the 100-year history of the National Park Service. This book is not only aesthetically pleasing and therefore ideal as a living room centerpiece, but it’s also fun to pick up and read and a great item for entertaining a guest or starting a conversation.

Anderson Design Group has put together several coffee table books, including the Illustrated Guide to the Grand Circle Hard Cover Coffee Table Book and the Illustrated Guide to Great Smoky Mountains National Park: Hard Cover Coffee Table Book. These books focus on favorite National Park regions, like the Great Smoky Mountains (the #1 most-visited National Park on the roster) and the Grand Circle (a region in the American Southwest known for having the most concentrated network of National Parks in the contiguous United States).

Wall Decor for the Living Room

One of the easiest ways to decorate a living room and make a big statement is with a Curated Gallery Wall Set. Designed to be hung together in a professionally designed pattern, Anderson Design Group’s pre-built sets feature six gorgeous, ready-to-hang framed prints.

The Curated Gallery Wall Set takes the guesswork out of decorating a living room by creating an easy and affordable way to display a handpicked grouping of ADG’s most popular prints. All that is needed to fill the living room wall with art is a hammer and six nails.

Sold separately, customers would ordinarily spend over $550 on the posters and frames. But in the Gallery Set, customers save hundreds of dollars and get a pre-designed gallery wall. And with eight different wall sets to choose from, it’s the perfect low-cost solution to decorating the living room. (Gallery Wall Sets cover approximately 4.5 feet x 4.5 feet of wall space).

Decorating the Living Room with… Puzzles!

Similar to the coffee table book idea, some homeowners and designers prefer to decorate living rooms with an artistic jigsaw puzzle. One way to do this is by placing the puzzle box on top of a surface (like a coffee table, mantle, windowsill, or end table). Some also prefer to assemble the jigsaw puzzle first, then display the completed puzzle on a surface.

Yet another way to decorate with a puzzle is to assemble the pieces in an empty picture frame that matches the dimension of the finished puzzle. When the puzzle is fully assembled within the picture frame, coat the assembled puzzle pieces in clear epoxy to ensure they remain in place. Once the epoxy is dry, the picture frame can be hung vertically on the wall, displaying the completed puzzle and creating a one-of-a-kind living room decor piece.

Anderson Design Group created 20 deluxe jigsaw puzzles with 500-piece and 1,000-piece options that feature original ADG poster art of the National Parks, American travel destinations, and collage-style art designs. The puzzles offer countless hours of family fun, culminating in a unique arrangement of living room decor when the puzzle is completed.

Interior Design Lighting and Poster Art that Matches the Space

A final design tip to keep in mind when decorating a living room is to work with the degree of light the room has at any given time of day. Bright rooms with large windows and plenty of natural light look best with lighter-colored artwork. A good choice for a room with a fair amount of natural light is ADG’s Premium Gallery Wrapped Canvases. The off-white borders of the canvas and the cheerful, bright colors in the archival inks blend well with a bright interior space.

Simultaneously, rooms that utilize all-wood interiors (log cabins, cottages, lodges); other interior spaces that may have darker hues and a more mysterious, even moody design (basement spaces, man caves, studies, or dens); or spaces that have lots of books and built-in shelves; these would likely look better with ADG’s Metal Signs. Embodying a retro feel and perfect for outdoor and indoor decor alike, ADG’s metal signs have the look and feel of vintage posters while still being made with 21st-century printing techniques and UV coatings that keep the signs lustrous and colorful for years to come.

Decorating on a Budget? Check Out the Poster Bargain Bin!

Usually the largest room in the home by square footage, a living room can require a fair amount of pieces to decorate fully. With that in mind, ADG launched a Bargain Bin Collection, an assortment of sale items to help folks decorate their homes on a budget.

From time to time, especially around the holidays, ADG staff print up many popular items so we won’t run out. An assortment of top-quality leftovers has been building up, and we need to find good homes for them all. At reduced prices up to 70% off, this wide selection of prints allows customers to decorate entire rooms with enough money left over for a puzzle or coffee table book!

We’d Love to See Your Decorated Living Room!

If this article was helpful and you decorate your living room with ADG art, we’d love to see how it turned out! Just navigate to our Google Profile and submit a photo on the review page. We look forward to seeing your new poster art in the living room (or nursery, or kitchen, etc.)!

 

Until next time,

-Ren Brabenec
Anderson Design Group Staff Writer