Japandi Wall Art: How to Choose and Hang Prints for a Calm Room

STYLE GUIDE · 9 min read · Kuriosis Studio Team, Berlin · October 2026

Japandi wall art is a question of restraint: one print with a muted palette and a plain wooden frame, hung with air around it. This guide covers what the style is, which colours and motifs fit, how high to hang a print above a sofa or a bed, and which frame to choose. The examples are art prints from our Berlin studio.

What is Japandi style?

Japandi is an interior style that combines Japanese minimalism with Scandinavian simplicity: natural materials, low furniture, few objects and walls in off-white, beige or soft grey (Wikipedia). The word joins "Japan" and "Scandi". According to Jens Sejrup, Associate Professor of Japanese Studies at the University of Copenhagen, the term appeared in the mid-2010s; the Australian Daily Telegraph described it as a trend in December 2016, and design magazines picked it up over the following two years (Danish Architecture Center).

The style has older roots than the word. Arnold Krog, artistic director of the Royal Porcelain Factory in Copenhagen, brought a Japanese-inspired visual language into the factory's decoration after seeing an art dealer's collection of Japanese art in Paris in 1886, and Finn Juhl named a furniture series "Japan" in 1957 (Danish Architecture Center). In November 2015 Designmuseum Danmark opened "Learning from Japan", an exhibition of more than 400 works that set Japanese objects next to the Danish designs they inspired. The museum's explanation for the kinship is practical: neither Denmark nor Japan has much in the way of domestic minerals, metals or fuel. Japan, covered in forest, made wood the material for houses and furniture, and Danish designers worked with the same plain, local materials (Designmuseum Danmark).

Two ideas sit underneath the look. Wabi-sabi, as the gallerist Hirose Ichirō explains for Japan House London, is beauty found in simplicity and imperfection. The dictionary definition he quotes speaks of accepting "the changes wrought by the passage of time" (Japan House London). Hygge, the Danish half, is "creating a warm atmosphere and enjoying the good things in life with good people" (VisitDenmark). On a wall, that means a print that does not shout and a room that is allowed to stay a little empty.

What makes Japandi wall art

Three things make an art print read as Japandi: a muted palette, a visible trace of hand or material, and empty space around and inside the image. Take Wheatear in Bamboo by Ohara Koson, the print in the first row below. The paper tone carries most of the picture, the bamboo leaves are the only strong colour, and the middle of the sheet is left empty. It is a woodblock print from the early twentieth century and it still looks like something made this year.

The empty space has a name in Japanese. Hara Kenya, art director of MUJI, describes "ma" as a physical or temporal gap between things, and "yohaku" as the empty space surrounding something. He quotes a compendium of painting technique: "blank spaces are part of the picture, to be filled by the heart" (Japan House London). The tokonoma, the alcove in a traditional Japanese room, is a stage for a single scroll, object or flower arrangement (Wikipedia). That is the clearest rule for a Japandi wall: one print where you might have hung three.

Which colours work in a Japandi room?

A Japandi room runs on warm neutrals (sand, cream, oatmeal, dove grey) with a few darker accents such as slate, stormy blue or black (Chairish), and wood in every shade from pale ash to dark oak. The art should stay inside that range. Dezeen's roundup of Japandi living rooms shows the same ingredients in every room: wood in abundance, bare branches or dried flowers, and walls in beige or left bare (Dezeen).

For prints this means two safe routes. The first is a motif on a pale ground, like the azaleas at the top of this page, which Ogawa Kazumasa photographed against a grey-blue sky. The second is a landscape in two or three close colours: the ochre grasses and teal water of Late Autumn in Ichikawa by Hasui, or the greens of Morning at Tsutanuma Pond. A print with a single accent colour, such as the vermilion gate in Hasui's Kasuga Shrine, works if that colour appears nowhere else in the room.

What art goes with Japandi?

Japanese woodblock landscapes from the shin-hanga period, flower studies on plain paper and quiet abstract work in earth tones all fit, because they share the muted palette and the empty space the style asks for. Shin-hanga, the "new prints" movement that ran from about 1915 to 1942, kept the traditional woodblock technique and added Western ideas about light and atmosphere (Wikipedia). The Smithsonian's National Museum of Asian Art describes the results as "atmospheric land and cityscapes reminiscent of Claude Monet and James McNeill Whistler", with Kawase Hasui singled out for his renderings of light and weather (National Museum of Asian Art). When a customer asks us for something calm, Hasui's lakes and harbours are the prints we reach for first.

Two kinds of print work less well. Bold advertising posters with large type pull a quiet room towards the street, and dense gallery walls of small frames undo the empty space that makes the style. If you love both, our guide to Japanese wall art covers the louder side of Japanese prints, from Hokusai's waves to Kuniyoshi's warriors, and shows where they belong.

"There is a mutual understanding and respect in both Scandinavia and Japan for the use of natural materials in design and architecture, a fondness of muted color palettes, and a humble approach to expressivity through genuine craftsmanship."
Jonas Bjerre-Poulsen, Norm Architects, in Livingetc

Japandi living room: one print above the sofa

In a Japandi living room, hang one print above the sofa, about two thirds as wide as the sofa, with its centre at 145 to 152 cm from the floor. The width rule is the one point where the interior guides we compared agree: 1stDibs and Studio McGee both put art above a sofa at roughly two thirds of the furniture's width (1stDibs, Studio McGee). For a 2 m sofa that points to a 70 × 100 cm print in landscape format, or a 50 × 70 cm print if the sofa is short.

The height is where the guides disagree, so we give the range. 1stDibs puts average eye level at 145 to 152 cm (57 to 60 inches); Studio McGee uses 152 cm. Above furniture, though, the gap matters more than the centre line. Studio McGee leaves 10 to 15 cm between the sofa back and the bottom of the frame, 1stDibs 20 to 25 cm. We hang at about 20 cm. Lower than that and the frame gets knocked by heads; higher and the print floats away from the sofa it belongs to.

Choose the motif by the light in the room. A bright room with pale wood takes a landscape with a lot of sky, such as Mount Fuji from Lake Yamanaka by Takahashi Shōtei. A room with darker wood and a charcoal sofa can carry Hasui's Road to Nikko, whose deep greens pick up the wood without adding a new colour.

Browse Japandi Art Prints →

Japandi bedroom: quieter and lower

In a Japandi bedroom the print goes above the bed, hung lower than in the living room, with a darker or softer palette than the rest of the house. The bed is the one place where you look at the wall lying down, so we drop the centre to about 140 cm and leave 15 to 20 cm between the headboard and the lower edge of the frame. Our guide to what to hang above your bed has the width rules for single, double and king beds.

Night scenes suit this room. Hasui's Spring Evening at Inokashira Park is almost entirely blue and violet, with a moon and cherry trees reflected in the water; it reads as one dark tone from across the room and only shows its detail up close. A pale alternative is Lotus Flower by Ogawa Kazumasa, a single bloom against sky, which does the same job in a room with white walls and pale linen.

Combining prints: pairs instead of gallery walls

A gallery wall can work in a Japandi room if you treat it as one object: two or three prints of the same size, the same frame, 5 to 8 cm apart, hung as a single block. Studio McGee recommends 5 to 8 cm (2 to 3 inches) between frames in a group (Studio McGee), and the closer spacing keeps the group reading as one shape with air around it. Anything looser turns into the salon-style hang that this style avoids. Our gallery wall guide covers the full range of layouts, and the seven ways to hang art prints explain where the grid and the row come from.

Pairs are easier. Two Hasui landscapes of the same season hang well side by side, because they share the same vertical format and a close palette. Nenokuchi Lake and Late Autumn in Ichikawa share a teal water and a warm shore and sit together without effort. A flower study and a landscape are harder to pair; if you want both, hang them on different walls.

Quieter prints that pair with the first row:

Which frame colour for Japandi prints?

Oak is the default frame for Japandi wall art, because the style is built on pale wood and the frame then disappears into the room. Black works where the room already has black accents, such as a steel lamp or dark window frames, and it sharpens a pale print like the azaleas. Brown suits rooms with walnut or smoked oak furniture. Whichever you choose, use the same colour on every print in the room; mixed frames add visual noise the style is trying to remove.

Paper or canvas is a separate choice. Woodblock prints and flower photographs keep their fine lines on matte Fine Art Paper, and the acrylic front of the frame protects the paper. A canvas print has no glass and no reflection, which suits a room lit by a low lamp, and the texture of the canvas sits comfortably next to linen and wood. Our canvas print vs art print guide goes through the differences.

Questions

What is the difference between Japandi and Scandinavian style?

Japandi starts from Scandinavian design, a movement of simplicity and function that took shape in the early twentieth century and flourished in the 1950s (Wikipedia), and adds the Japanese preference for lower furniture, imperfection and empty space, and often darker wood. On the wall it shows as fewer prints, more muted colour and a frame that matches the furniture instead of a white one.

Is Japandi still in style?

Yes. Livingetc reported in March 2025 that Google searches for "Japandi" were up 48 percent year on year (Livingetc), and in June 2026 Copenhagen's 3 Days of Design festival ran seven exhibitions on Japanese design; Yoshiyuki Miyamae of Issey Miyake told Dezeen that "Danish design and Japanese design are, I think, very similar" (Dezeen). The Danish strand alone goes back to Krog's porcelain of the 1880s.

Does a gallery wall work in a Japandi room?

Only a tight one: two or three prints in one size and one frame, 5 to 8 cm apart, hung as a single block with empty wall around it. Mixed sizes and frames belong to other styles.

Which print size for a small Japandi room?

Choose by viewing distance. From about 1.7 m, a 50 × 70 cm print reads as a whole; from 2.4 m, 70 × 100 cm works. In a small room one 50 × 70 cm print on the main wall usually does more than two A3 prints. Our art print size guide has the distances for each format.

How we make them

Every print on this page is made in our own studio in Berlin, with archival pigment inks on Fine Art Paper or canvas. We print, frame and pack each one ourselves, so it has been through our hands before it reaches your wall.

Sources & Further Reading

• Wikipedia: Japandi
• Danish Architecture Center: Japan and Scandinavia found each other long before we learned to call it Japandi
• Designmuseum Danmark: Learning from Japan (exhibition, 2015 to 2018)
• Japan House London: Wabi-sabi and Japanese craft
• Japan House London: Looking behind Japanese concepts of empty space
• VisitDenmark: What is hygge?
• Wikipedia: Ma (negative space)
• Wikipedia: Shin-hanga
• Wikipedia: Scandinavian design
• Smithsonian National Museum of Asian Art: Modern Japanese prints from the Robert O. Muller collection
• Dezeen: Ten elegant living rooms with Japandi interiors
• Chairish: What is Japandi style?
• 1stDibs: How to arrange wall art
• Studio McGee: How to hang art
• Livingetc: 10 Japandi living rooms (interview with Norm Architects)
• Livingetc: Japandi decor (search growth, March 2025)
• Dezeen: Japanese design exhibitions at 3 Days of Design 2026

Browse All Japandi Prints →