The most common wall in a Swedish office is still white, empty, and just over ten square meters. Anyone tasked with doing something about it faces a question unlike the one they would ask themselves in their own living room: what print works for forty people who didn’t choose it themselves, who pass it every day for two years, and who need to feel comfortable in a room where work is the main thing and the decor should simply support it? That’s a very different kind of buying decision from choosing art for your own living room wall, and this guide is about precisely that decision.
What Knight and Haslam’s office experiment says about the bare wall
There is surprisingly little research that isolates art from everything else in a work environment. But one experiment comes up in almost every serious review: Craig Knight and S. Alexander Haslam’s study The Relative Merits of Lean, Enriched, and Empowered Offices, published in 2010 in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied. The researchers had participants work in four different office environments. The first was bare, completely without decoration. The second had been furnished by the researchers with plants and art. In the third, participants decorated the room themselves, and in the fourth, they decorated it themselves – after which the researcher came in and rearranged their choices.
The results pointed in the same direction in both experiments. Participants in the decorated environments reported a stronger sense of belonging to the organization, greater physical and psychological comfort, higher job satisfaction, and greater productivity than those in the bare environment. The worst outcomes were for those whose own choices had been torn down and replaced with someone else’s.
Quick facts: Knight and Haslam’s 2010 study compared four office environments and found that decorated rooms outperformed bare ones in both well-being and performance – but the worst environment of all was the one where someone else tore down the employees’ own choices. Castellum’s report The Future of Work 2026 also identifies quiet zones as the feature Swedish office workers most clearly want.
For those of you buying art, that means two things. First, the bar is lower than you think: the big difference is between something and nothing, not between good and brilliant. The second is harder to swallow. If you decide everything yourself, over the heads of the people who will sit in the room, you risk ending up in the fourth category. Let the staff vote on three out of twelve prints, and you’ll have both a better selection and a decision they can get behind.
The reception, the meeting room and the quiet zone have three different purposes
The biggest mistake when buying art for an office is ordering twenty identical images and distributing them evenly throughout the space. Three areas of the office have very different viewing contexts, and they call for different choices.
The reception: five seconds to say something
A visitor sees the reception wall for a few seconds before turning their attention to the person behind the desk. Here, one large image works better than five small ones. Architectural images and cityscapes carry weight without feeling personal, and they also give someone waiting a conversation starter. If the company has a strong connection to a particular place, images of well-known places are an easy way to signal where you belong without putting up a map.
The meeting room: the wall that appears in every video call
Since hybrid work became the norm, the meeting room wall has taken on a new function. It appears on camera, behind people's heads, for forty-five minutes at a time—for participants who aren't in the room. This places demands on it that no one thought about before 2020. Highly detailed images become muddy in compressed video. Images with strong diagonals draw the eye away from the speaker. Text on a canvas is readable to everyone except the person sitting in front of it, which is exactly the wrong way round. Choose calm compositions with few elements and medium contrast—graphic posters with large areas of color and calm abstractions work best on camera. A practical test: take a photo of the wall with your phone, shrink the image to a quarter of its size and look at it. If the image still holds together, it will also work in a video call.
The quiet zone: art that asks nothing of you
The purpose-driven office, where every area has a function, is replacing the open-plan landscape. In the quiet zone, people sit who have actively chosen to opt out of stimulation. Art there shouldn't have to perform. Subtle nature scenes, misty horizons and plenty of open space do the job; anything that shouts does the opposite. Also, place the artwork on a side wall rather than directly in front of someone sitting down. Art directly in the line of sight competes with the screen, while art at the edge of the field of vision serves as the resting point the eye seeks between tasks.
"In reception, the art should say something in five seconds. In the quiet zone, it should be able to say nothing at all for four hours."
The earth tones of Stockholm Design Days 2026 are changing the choice of artwork
The clearest signal from this year's Swedish design showcases was a shift away from clinical white and chrome toward earthy colors and natural materials. Olive green, terracotta, clay, and warm neutrals dominated the displays, and furniture makers increasingly chose to develop existing collections further rather than launch new ones - sustainability has moved from marketing to business strategy.
This matters in a concrete way when choosing art. A stark black-and-white print that looked sharp against a white plaster wall and chrome chair legs suddenly feels cold and a little detached against oak veneer and olive-green wool. If you choose to switch to furniture in warmer tones, the art should follow suit. Botanical prints, muted landscapes, and abstract works in sand, ochre, and green bring the room together instead of fighting against it. If you still want to keep the grayscale, it works best in smaller formats and in corridors, where it provides a pause rather than taking center stage.
The opposite is true, too. If you're staying in a space with cold lighting, blue wall-to-wall carpet, and glass partition walls, it's not the time to buy terracotta-colored prints just because they're on trend. The art should relate to the room you actually have, not the room you'd like to have if the budget stretched to a renovation.
Five decisions that turn office art into wallpaper
There are a number of recurring poor choices that make the art fade into the background after three weeks. The first is formats that are too small. A 30x40 on a five-meter-wide corridor wall doesn't read as art but as a noticeboard, and it's hard to make out at the speed you walk through a corridor.
The second is motivational text prints. They age faster than anything else in an office, talk down to the person reading them, and set a tone that few employees would have chosen for themselves. If you want typography on the wall, choose text prints with literary or poetic lines instead of exhortations.
The third is buying all the art for the space from a single series on the same day. It gives the place a hotel feel and means no single piece has to carry the room. The fourth is hanging identical frames with exactly the same center-to-center spacing throughout the space - variation in size makes the eye linger. The fifth, and the one with the clearest research backing, is not to ask anyone.
Tip: Put twelve candidate prints in a shared document and have everyone cast three votes, with a line explaining why. The votes give you the shortlist; the comments give you the arguments when someone asks why the money went on art—and according to Knight and Haslam’s data, participation is the factor that makes the biggest difference to how people experience the environment.
Size, frame and installation in a space you don’t own
Base your choice on viewing distance, not wall space. A rule of thumb that works: the artwork should be about one-third as wide as the distance between the visitor and the wall. In a reception area where people stand three meters away, that means 70x100 cm. In a meeting room where people sit two meters from the wall, 50x70 cm works. In corridors and staff rooms, where people pass close by, 40x50 cm is plenty.
There’s a different rule for hanging art above furniture. The art should be sixty to seventy-five percent of the width of the sofa, cabinet or bench it hangs above, and its lower edge should sit twenty to thirty centimeters above the top of the furniture so they read as a single unit. The center of the artwork will then usually be around 150 centimeters above the floor, which is eye level for most people standing.
Choosing frames matters more in an office than at home, because office lighting is often harsher. Slim frames in black metal or dark wood provide an edge that stands up to strong overhead lighting, while light wood frames soften spaces with lots of glass and concrete. Avoid high-gloss glass in rooms with ceiling spotlights—the reflections make the artwork hard to see from halfway across the room.
If you’re in a rented space where drilling is prohibited, there are effective alternatives. A rail system mounted on the ceiling cornice can hold heavy frames without leaving a trace, while a wooden poster hanger with a magnet is so light it can hang from a simple hook. Our guide to art without drilling covers the methods in detail, and the same principles apply in an office as in an apartment.
From a budget perspective, office art costs less than most people expect. A reception area, four meeting rooms and two corridors can be furnished nicely with twelve to fifteen framed prints. Per employee, that works out to far less than the cost of a single office chair, and unlike the chair, it’s seen by everyone who visits.
Frequently asked questions about office art
An office doesn’t become a better place to work just because you put art on the walls. But a bare wall is also an active choice, and it’s the only choice research is fairly consistent in saying you should avoid. Start with the reception area and a meeting room, let employees vote, and build from there. Explore minimalist posters for calm spaces, and read more in our guide to art and focus in the workplace or our complete guide to gallery walls if you want to create a larger arrangement in the staff room.