Paintings for holiday apartments and rental rooms: how to choose

Guests choose a holiday apartment from its photos, so the walls in your listing matter as much as the bed. A bare white wall looks cold in a photo; a hand-painted painting gives the room character and sets your listing apart from the ones next door.

SvetSlik has sold hand-painted paintings on canvas since 2011, and for holiday apartments, rental rooms and small hotels we also put together sets of paintings for several units. Our largest project of this kind was Hotel Kempinski Palace Portorož, for which we made more than 250 framed paintings in 2022 to the interior designer’s brief. We have also furnished several holiday apartments in Croatia and in Bovec, Slovenia, with our paintings.

Which paintings suit a holiday apartment

A subject from the place. Guests come for the place, so a painting that carries it indoors works best: sea, boats and harbour towns by the coast, mountains and forest in the Alps, vineyards and countryside inland. Guests like to photograph and share paintings like these.

Light, calm colours. Blue, sand, green and warm white tones go with almost any furniture and make the room look airy in listing photos. In a modern holiday apartment, abstract paintings in the colours of the textiles work well, as in photo 2.

One real painting instead of many small ones. One painting of a proper size on the main wall does more than five small frames that barely show in a listing photo.

Sizes for a holiday apartment

• Above the bed: about 100 × 70 or 120 × 80 cm over a double bed, 70 × 50 cm over a single.
• Above the sofa: roughly two thirds of the sofa’s width, often 120 × 80 cm, or a two-panel painting.
• Kitchen and dining corner: 50 × 70 or 60 × 80 cm, a still life or a local subject.
• Hallway and entrance: a narrow portrait format, for example 40 × 80 cm.

Hang the centre of the painting about 145 to 150 cm from the floor. More advice for each space in our guide paintings for hotels.

Paintings that survive guest turnover

In a holiday rental, guests change every few days, suitcases lean on walls and cleaning is frequent. So:

Framed or stretched beats rolled: the frame protects the edges, and a painting on 2.5 cm stretcher bars is sturdy and light.

Hang it securely, on two hooks, so it does not tilt when someone brushes it. Not above a radiator or in the bathroom, where there is a lot of heat and moisture.

Stretching and framing are done in our workshop in Slovenia, so the paintings arrive ready to hang.

Sets of paintings for several apartments

If you rent out several units, give the paintings a common thread and each apartment its own subject. All units then look recognisably yours, and guests can tell them apart in the photos. Photos 2, 3 and 4 are from the same villa: a different painting in every room, but all in orange, blue and white.

1. Units and style. Send the number of apartments, wall photos and the style of the furnishings.
2. Subject proposal. We suggest subjects and sizes for each unit and prepare an offer for your project.
3. Painted by hand. Different painters we work with paint them by hand. You receive a photo of every painting before dispatch.
4. Ready to hang. We stretch and frame them in our workshop in Slovenia. Paintings in stock ship within 6 working days.

Paintings by room: paintings for the bedroom and paintings for the living room; for restaurants and cafés see paintings for restaurants.