Colour
Red wall art that you can still live with in March.
Red is the colour most often bought on impulse and taken down within a year. Almost always because it was the wrong red, not because red was the wrong idea.
The shades on this page, with their hex values — useful if you are matching paint or searching elsewhere.
Three reds, three temperaments
- Pillar-box red — pure, bright, and genuinely difficult. It pulls the eye from anywhere in the room and never stops. Fine in a hallway, punishing in a bedroom.
- Brick and rust — red with brown in it. These behave like terracotta: warm, earthy, and easy to sit beside.
- Oxblood and wine — red with black in it. These behave almost like neutrals. Deep enough to anchor a wall without demanding attention, and the safest red for a room you spend evenings in. More on this on the burgundy page.
Red needs less area than you think
A red accent occupying a fifth of the print will read as “a red picture” from across the room. A print that is mostly red reads as a red wall. If you are buying red for a living space, look for prints where red is the accent rather than the field, and put the area into a cream or stone ground instead.
What red sits with
Cream, sand, deep green, walnut and brass. Red and pink in the same eyeline is harder than it sounds and usually needs a clear tonal gap between them. Red with cool grey is the pairing that most often looks cheap.
Prints in this colour
From the Artsby collection, ranked by how close each palette sits to the shades above. Printed in Australia, delivery included.
Or match it to your actual room
Photograph the wall and the matcher reads the real colours out of it — then shows you prints in those, and lets you hang one on your own wall before you buy.