A television is the least negotiable object in most homes. It is large, it is rectangular, it is black when it is off, and it sits at exactly the height where a good painting used to go. Most people respond by surrendering the wall entirely — screen in the middle, console underneath, nothing else — and then wonder why the room feels like a waiting area.
There is a better answer. Learning how to hang wall art around a TV is less about hiding the screen and more about giving it company, so the eye has somewhere else to land when the credits roll. Done well, a media wall reads as a composition. Done badly, it reads as clutter with a screen in it. The difference is almost entirely a matter of proportion, spacing and restraint — three things you can plan in an afternoon.
Why the TV wall defeats most people
Every other wall in a house gives you a blank rectangle to work with. The media wall gives you a fixed black rectangle you did not choose, mounted at a height dictated by your sofa, wired to a console you cannot move. It is the one wall where the furniture wins the argument before you start.
The usual failures follow from that:
- Art that is too small. A 12x16 print beside a 65-inch screen looks like a postage stamp that wandered in.
- Art hung at the wrong height. People centre art at gallery height, then centre the TV at seated eye level, and end up with two unrelated horizons.
- Too much competition. A busy gallery wall crowding a screen turns the whole surface into visual noise the moment the TV switches on.
- Nothing at all. The most common outcome, and the one that leaves a room feeling unfinished for years.
The fix is to stop treating the screen as an obstacle and start treating it as the largest element in a layout you are still allowed to design.
Start with the black rectangle rule
Before you hang anything, look at the wall with the TV off. That dark rectangle is a shape with weight, and every piece you add has to balance it. This is why symmetrical arrangements almost always beat improvised ones on a media wall: the screen is a rigid shape, so the things around it need to be rigid too.
Three arrangements that reliably work:
- Flanking pair. One vertical canvas on each side of the screen, hung at matching heights, with equal breathing room. The simplest option and the hardest to get wrong.
- Asymmetric anchor. One large piece on one side only, balanced by a tall plant, floor lamp or shelf on the other. Good for walls where the TV sits off-centre.
- Framed grid. A tight, evenly spaced set of same-size pieces on one or both sides, treated as a single block rather than individual works.
Whichever you choose, keep the outer edges of your arrangement inside the width of the media unit below. The console becomes an invisible baseline, and everything above it reads as one deliberate group.
Colour-forward abstracts do particularly well in this job. The BLOOMSURGE canvas print is a good example of the type: saturated enough to register from across a room, loose enough that it never competes for narrative attention the way a figurative print would.
Getting the scale right
Scale is where most media walls quietly fail. The screen sets the bar, and anything noticeably smaller than a third of its width will look accidental. A workable set of proportions:
- 55-inch screen: flanking canvases of roughly 16x24 inches each, or a pair of 18x24s if the wall is generous.
- 65-inch screen: 20x30 or 24x36 verticals, hung slightly closer to the screen than you think looks right.
- 75-inch and up: one substantial piece per side, 24x36 minimum, or a grid of four smaller works read as one block.
Vertical orientation is your friend here. The TV is aggressively horizontal, so upright pieces push the eye up and stop the wall reading as one long letterbox. If you only own landscape work, stack two pieces vertically on each side instead of hanging one.
Spacing, height and the seated sightline
Standard gallery advice puts the centre of a work at 57 to 60 inches. On a media wall, ignore it. The reference point is the screen, not the floor.
- Align the vertical centre of your art with the vertical centre of the TV. This creates a single horizon across the wall.
- Leave 6 to 10 inches between the edge of the screen and the nearest frame. Closer than that feels cramped; wider than that and the pieces stop reading as a group.
- Keep spacing between multiple pieces tighter than the gap to the screen — 2 to 4 inches works — so each side reads as one unit.
- Check the arrangement from the sofa, sitting down, not from three feet away standing up. That is the only sightline that matters.
If the room has a second seating position — an armchair at an angle, a kitchen island behind — check from there too. Media walls are usually viewed from more angles than a hallway or bedroom wall.
Colour: borrow from the screen, not from the sofa
The instinct is to match art to upholstery. On a media wall, match it to the darkness instead. A screen at rest is a large dark void, and art with genuine contrast holds up against it in a way that soft, tonal work does not.
Two approaches:
- High-contrast colour. Deep grounds with bright bursts read cleanly against the black rectangle and stay legible in low light — which is how most people actually see this wall.
- Warm counterweight. Amber, gold and coral tones warm up the cool grey glow of electronics, making the corner feel lived-in rather than technical.
Whatever you choose, pick pieces that survive dim lighting. A subtle watercolour disappears the moment you turn the lamps down for a film. Something from the Color Splash collection holds its shape in near-dark, which is exactly what the room demands.
What to do with the shelf below
The console is part of the composition whether you plan it or not. A media unit stacked with remotes, cables and three different charging bricks will undo any arrangement above it.
- Keep the surface to three object groups maximum — a stack, a tall thing, a low thing.
- Include one object with a soft silhouette to break up all the rectangles: a bowl, a vase, a rounded lamp.
- Leave the space directly beneath the screen relatively clear, so the eye travels up rather than snagging.
- Route cables down and back, not down and across. Nothing wrecks a media wall faster than a visible loop of HDMI.
A stacked BLOOMSURGE puzzle box earns its place on a console shelf twice over: it looks like part of the palette, and it is the most reliable argument anyone has yet found for turning the television off.
Media wall styling by room type
The same principles land differently depending on where the screen lives.
- Open-plan living room. The media wall is visible from the kitchen and the dining table, so the arrangement needs to hold up at a distance. Go larger and simpler — a flanking pair, nothing fussy.
- Small apartment living room. Keep art tight to the screen and skip the grid. One vertical piece on each side, generous wall left bare, prevents the whole room from feeling packed.
- Bedroom with a wall-mounted screen. Lower contrast, warmer tones. This wall is seen last thing at night and first thing in the morning, so it should read calm.
- Basement or media room. Darker walls make bright abstracts sing. This is the one setting where you can go maximal without the room feeling loud.
In every case, the test is the same: switch the TV on, sit down, and see whether the art still feels like it belongs. If it disappears entirely, it was too quiet. If it fights the picture, it was too busy.
If you want the design in a smaller register, the BLOOMSURGE hardcover journal repeats the palette at coffee-table scale — a quiet way to tie the seating area back to the wall without hanging another frame.
Frequently asked questions
Should wall art around a TV match the screen size exactly?
No — matching heights exactly tends to look mechanical. Aim for art that reaches roughly two-thirds to three-quarters of the screen's height, hung so the vertical centres align. That reads as intentional without looking like a diagram.
Can I hang a gallery wall behind a mounted television?
You can, but it takes discipline. Treat the screen as one element in the grid, use frames in a single finish, and keep the surrounding pieces low in contrast so they recede when the TV is on. If in doubt, keep the area immediately around the screen clear and build outward.
What size canvas works beside a 65-inch TV?
A 20x30 or 24x36 vertical canvas on each side is the reliable range. Anything under 16 inches wide will read as an afterthought at that scale. If your wall is narrow, one larger piece on a single side, balanced by a floor lamp opposite, works better than two small ones.
How do I stop the TV from dominating the room?
Give the eye competing interest at the same visual weight — colour, texture and a second focal point. Warm lighting either side of the screen helps enormously, as does keeping the console surface calm. The goal is not to disguise the television but to stop it being the only thing worth looking at.
A media wall is the hardest wall in the house and the one most people never attempt. It rewards a plan: fix the horizon, respect the proportions, choose art with enough colour to survive a dark screen and dim lamps. Browse the canvas prints collection for pieces built to hold a wall at that scale — and if you would rather spend the evening away from the screen entirely, the puzzles and art journals carry the same designs into slower hours.