Dopamine Decor Art Prints

What dopamine decor looks like on a wall

Most of it is colour at full strength. Alice Straker paints five silver sardines on a flat orange ground, and the lobster in Lobster Yellow sits on a yellow you can see from the next room. Food and drink come up a lot, as in Canned Tomatoes by Studio Mandariini or Rosi Feist's Espresso Italiano, a moka pot in front of green, white and red. If quirky wall art is what you are after, there are Gigi Rosado's disco balls and an avocado with a mirror ball where the stone should be, by Melloi Art Prints. For lettering, Ohkimiko's Cool Girls Live Here sets orange type on pink. You will find more of the edible kind under food and drink prints.

Colourful wall art, room by room

The kitchen is the easy start, because so many of these motifs are things you eat or drink. Sardine Al Limone or Rosi Feist's Chilli Sauce next to the shelf looks as if it belongs there, and our kitchen prints have more in that direction. A hallway has little furniture and people only pass through, so it can take the loudest piece you like. Let's Go for a Bike Ride by Sue Graef, a blue bike on a red ground, does well by the front door, with more ideas under hallway prints. In the living room we would hang one large motif above the sofa and keep the cushions plain. For the bedroom the soft gradients are the better pick, Dina Dankers' Warm Haze Glow or Little Dean's Pink Gradient Cloud.

How to mix colourful prints on one wall

Pick one colour and let it come back. The orange of Sardines on Orange returns in Jazzberry Blue's Smudge 2 and in the wavy rays of Sunny by Gigi Rosado, and three prints that share a colour look planned. Mix the kinds of picture as well, say a lettering print next to an object and an abstract, because three slogans in a row get tiring. Give every print the same frame colour, the motifs already differ enough. Measure the wall before you order: three art prints in 50 × 70 cm side by side, with 10 cm between them, come to 1.70 m.

Art print or canvas print, and which frame

Flat colour fields, lettering and fine outlines stay sharpest as an art print on matte fine art paper, and that describes most of this collection. The gradients are the exception: Interzone 1 by Jazzberry Blue or Warm Haze Glow gain from the woven surface of a canvas print, stretched on a stretcher frame about 2 cm deep in FSC-certified wood. Our guide canvas print vs art print goes through the differences. Art prints come in A3, 50 × 70 cm, 70 × 100 cm and A0, canvas prints in 30 × 40, 50 × 70 and 70 × 100 cm. We would start with art prints in 50 × 70 cm. For frames, black makes strong colours look richer, oak adds warmth and brown sits between the two. A canvas print can also have a floating frame in oak, black or brown, with a 5 to 9 mm gap depending on the size.

What is dopamine decor?

Dopamine decor is a way of furnishing a room around the things that lift your mood: strong colour, pattern and objects with a joke in them. It overlaps with maximalism and has no fixed palette, you choose the pieces by what you like looking at. On the wall that usually means colourful art prints with a clear subject, hung where you pass them every day.

Does colourful wall art work in a small or neutral room?

Yes, and a neutral room is where it shows most. One bright art print on a white wall, with grey or beige furniture around it, is enough to change how the room looks. You have not committed to anything either: take the print down and the room is neutral again. In a small room we would stay with one art print in 50 × 70 cm or a pair in A3 before filling a whole wall.

Will the colours stay this bright?

We use pigment inks rated for more than 100 years, on the art prints and on the canvas prints. We also make every piece to order in our own Berlin studio, so nothing sits in a warehouse before it reaches you.