Office Wall Art Sets: Planning a Corporate Series

Choosing one picture for an office and choosing fifteen, twenty or more are different jobs. With a single piece the question is "what suits this wall?". When you plan an office wall art set, the question becomes "how do all these walls speak one language?". In a corporate office, artwork spreads from reception to meeting rooms, from corridors to the management floor; if each piece is chosen on its own, the result is not a collection but a group of strangers. This guide explains how to plan a multi-piece series from the start: the wall inventory, the fixed and variable elements of the series, how to count pieces, the approval process, numbering, installation and how to manage the set over the years. The real decision is this: who builds the series, by which criteria, and in what order?

Scale, hanging height and lighting room by room are a separate subject, covered in detail in our guide to office wall art: scale, height and lighting. Here we look not at individual walls but at the set as a whole.

Why an office wall art set is different from single choices

Three things change in a multi-piece set. The first is consistency: someone walking along one floor should sense that the pictures in different rooms come from the same hand. The second is management: you need to know where each of twenty pieces hangs, which one has been damaged and which one has moved. The third is time: companies grow, move and add floors, and the set has to cope with that.

So an office art set is treated not as a shopping list but as a small project. Its input is the walls; its output is a series in which every piece is numbered, has a known place and can be added to later.

Step one: the wall inventory

Before deciding on the series, list the candidate walls one by one. Four pieces of information per wall are enough.

Location and function

Which area is the wall in: reception, meeting room, corridor, shared kitchen, a manager's office, open-plan space. The function decides who looks at the wall, for how long and from what distance. The reception wall is the first surface a visitor sees; a corridor wall is seen while walking, a meeting-room wall while seated.

Clear width

The free width left once doors, windows, sockets, air-conditioning units and cabinets are taken out. Floor plans rarely show these details, so measure on site with a tape.

Wall material

Concrete, brick or plasterboard. In offices most partition walls are plasterboard, and that decides how a picture is hung and which fixings are used. Glass partitions are not suitable for hanging and drop out of the inventory.

Constraints

Permission to drill in a rented office, the area around fire exits and emergency signs, the position of screens and whiteboards. Writing these down at the start avoids the late surprise of "we can't hang anything on this wall".

When the inventory is done you have a simple table in which each row is a wall. The piece count, the quotation discussion and the installation plan all come from that table.

What stays fixed and what varies

What makes a series a series is not that the pieces are identical in everything, but that they are strictly identical in some things. Splitting these into two lists makes planning easier.

Fixed elements

Fixed elements are decisions that do not change across the set: the surface (for example canvas or acrylic), the frame moulding and its tone, the colour palette and the size family. The size family need not be a single size, but it should not exceed two, at most three. At Aurecort the standard size for canvas, acrylic and framed pieces is 50 × 70 cm; we explain why it suits so many walls in our 50 × 70 cm size guide. With 50 × 70 as the main size, a custom size can be added as an exception for a large reception wall. For moulding width and tone, see how to choose a picture frame.

Variable elements

Variable elements change from piece to piece: composition, the main colour accent, orientation (portrait or landscape) and subject. In a tennis-themed set the subject might be the court seen from above, the texture of the surface, the rhythm of the lines, or objects such as a ball or racket. The variables keep the set from looking monotonous; the fixed elements keep it from falling apart.

A practical rule: each piece should share at least two fixed elements with the others and differ from them in at least one variable.

Counting pieces: how many do you need

The number comes from the inventory, wall by wall. Starting with a round figure ("let's buy twenty pictures") usually leaves some walls empty and others crowded.

For each wall, first work out how many pieces fit. A row whose total width is roughly 60–75 per cent of the wall's clear width gives a balanced proportion; the detail of that rule, and the choice between one piece and a gallery wall, is in gallery wall or one statement piece. Portrait 50 × 70 pieces hung 8 cm apart take up 108 cm for two, 166 cm for three and 224 cm for four.

A worked example: imagine a two-floor office with, on each floor, a reception or waiting area, two meeting rooms and one long corridor. With a row of three at reception, one or two pieces in each meeting room and a row of four in the corridor, you get 9–11 pieces per floor and 18–22 in total. This is only an example; your number comes from your own inventory.

It is also wise to add a margin. Offices change, and when a new meeting room opens, adding a piece from the same series is better than leaving a gap.

Corporate identity: colours and logo

Company colours can be used in the set, but they work better in moderation. Pictures flooded with the corporate colour soon start to look like posters. A more lasting approach is to treat the corporate colour as an accent: in a line, a field, an object. The rest of the palette comes from neutral tones or from the court's own colours.

The same restraint applies to the logo. Putting it on every picture turns the series into a corporate presentation; a single special piece in reception is usually enough. Using a logo requires approval from an authorised person and the original artwork file.

Approvals: one contact, drafts first

The most common delay in multi-piece sets comes from having too many decision-makers. If every department starts choosing its own wall, the fixed elements are soon lost. The set should therefore have a single point of contact, usually someone from office management, facilities or the interior design side.

The sequence works like this: the inventory and fixed elements are approved first, then drafts of the pieces are prepared and reviewed as a whole set, side by side. A draft that looks fine on its own can dominate the others when seen next to them. At Aurecort nothing goes into production before the drawing is approved; in a multi-piece set this rule applies to each piece separately.

Numbering and a layout plan

In a twenty-piece set, "which room was the blue one for?" should not be asked on installation day. Give each piece a code, for example floor, area and sequence (2-CO-03: second floor, corridor, third piece). Put the same code on the layout plan and on a label on the back of the picture.

The layout plan is a simple floor plan marked with the codes, plus hanging measurements for each wall: centre height, spacing between pieces and the distance of the first piece from the edge of the wall. It speeds up installation and, later, shows what goes where if a piece moves or is damaged.

Installation: hanging in a working office

In corporate offices installation is usually done out of hours or at a weekend. Three points matter in planning.

Fixings to suit the wall

A plain nail will not hold in plasterboard; you need plasterboard fixings or, where possible, a fixing into the studs behind. Concrete and brick take suitable plugs and screws. A glazed, framed 50 × 70 can weigh several kilograms, so weight and fixing should be assessed wall by wall.

Security in shared areas

In areas visitors pass through, such as reception and corridors, security hangers stop pictures from shifting or falling. We cover similar rules for tennis clubs in our guide to custom wall art for a tennis club.

One wall first

Rather than hanging the whole set in one night, hang one wall first and look at the result; small measuring errors show up early. Paper templates do the same job: sheets cut to the size of the pictures are taped to the wall and left there for a day.

Getting the pieces to the office safely is a separate subject; for boxes, corner protection and transport see how to pack and ship a painting safely.

Step by step: an art set for a corporate office

1. List the candidate walls and note location, clear width, material and constraints.

2. Choose the fixed elements of the set: surface, frame, palette and size family.

3. Define the variables: which subjects, which colour accents, which orientations.

4. Count pieces wall by wall and add a small margin for growth.

5. Name a single point of contact and write down the approval sequence.

6. Review the drafts side by side; if needed, change one piece for the balance of the set.

7. Give each piece a code and prepare the layout plan.

8. Plan the installation around the wall material and try one wall first.

9. Once the set is complete, keep the plan and the codes.

Common mistakes

Ordering room by room. Pictures chosen for each room at different times and by different criteria do not form a set.

Letting each department choose. The more decision-makers there are, the faster the fixed elements disappear.

Too many sizes. Four or five different sizes break up a series even with the same frame and palette.

Carrying the corporate colour everywhere. Colour used as an accent is strong; colour spread over every surface tires the eye.

Not asking about the wall material. Discovering plasterboard on installation day throws the schedule off.

Glossy surfaces in meeting rooms. Opposite screens and windows a glossy surface reflects; we explain how to choose the wall in glare on wall art.

Keeping no records. Without a plan and codes, asking for an identical replacement of a piece damaged a year later becomes difficult.

Managing the series over the years

Corporate offices do not stand still. Floors are added, rooms are merged, the company moves to another building. A well-planned set adapts because its fixed elements are written down: new pieces can be made with the same surface, frame and palette. In a move the layout plan is adapted to the new building, and thanks to the codes the former place and size of every piece is known.

Companies with several branches can keep the same fixed elements and give each branch its own variable, for instance its own court colour. The branches then resemble each other without being identical.

Care is part of management too. Pictures in shared areas collect more dust and get touched more often; the surface-by-surface cleaning advice in how to clean and care for wall art applies to offices as well.

Office art sets at Aurecort

Aurecort makes tennis-themed framed art and display pieces; the Framed Art Series consists of compositions that see the court from above, and the Plexi Series of pieces with a glossy surface. In a multi-piece set the work starts with the wall inventory and the fixed elements; drafts come first, and nothing goes into production before the drawing is approved. Each piece is made individually in the Kadıköy workshop. Quantities, sizes, surfaces and delivery terms are settled at the quotation stage.

If decorative objects are also being considered alongside the pictures, Aurecort 3D is a separate address for 3D-printed and hand-painted objects. For those who follow what is happening in tennis, the blog publishes a regular tennis news roundup.

Frequently asked questions

How many pieces should an office art set have?

There is no fixed number; it comes from the wall inventory. The clear width of each candidate wall is measured and the number of pieces that fit is worked out. It is a good idea to add a small margin for areas that may be added later.

Should every picture in the set be the same size?

Not necessarily, but the size family should be kept small: one main size and, if needed, one or two exceptions. A shared size holds the series together even across areas as different as corridors and meeting rooms.

Can company colours and the logo be used in the pictures?

Yes; the best results come from using the corporate colour as an accent. The logo requires approval from an authorised person and the original file, and the logo piece is usually limited to a single work in reception.

Can the set be extended later?

Yes, as long as the fixed elements are written down and the layout plan is kept. New pieces are made with the same surface, frame and palette, and the coding system slots them into the existing arrangement.

Aurecort