20 Easy DIY Art Projects for Your Walls

Empty walls are the home's most common unfinished detail. The twenty projects below are split by time commitment — none takes more than a weekend, and most take an afternoon. The list is chosen for impact relative to skill level: most require no art background, and none requires expensive tools. Pick two or three for a gallery wall; add from there as you make more.

Thirty-minute projects

1. Washi-tape frames — outline a print directly on the wall. Washi tape comes in hundreds of patterns and widths, removes cleanly from most painted surfaces, and lets you create a frame directly on the wall around a print you've tacked up. The result is a decorative frame that costs almost nothing, can be repositioned entirely, and changes with mood or season. Use a level for straight lines; a small spirit level is sufficient. Works best on flat, mid-sheen or satin-finish walls; avoid matte paint that may lift when the tape is removed, particularly in humid conditions. Test a small piece in an inconspicuous spot first.
2. Postcard grid — twelve cards in a 4×3 arrangement. Twelve postcards (gathered from travels, received through the post, or ordered from an illustrator's shop) arranged in a 4×3 grid with identical 3–4 cm spacing between them creates an instant gallery. The consistency of format and spacing does the work of curation. Pin with small brass tacks or use removable adhesive strips for a hole-free installation. The uniformity of postcard sizing is what makes the grid read as designed rather than random.
3. Stretched fabric on a frame — any interesting fabric on a wooden stretcher. Artist canvas stretcher bars (sold flat-pack at art shops, assembled without tools) can hold any fabric taut — a printed cotton, a section of wallpaper, a piece of upholstery fabric — stapled around the back. The resulting piece looks like a custom canvas and costs a fraction of framing. The creative decision is all in the fabric choice; the construction takes fifteen minutes with a staple gun.
4. Sheet-music collage — old sheet music slightly staggered in a frame. Pages of old sheet music (charity shops frequently have bundles; out-of-copyright music is also freely downloadable and printable) overlapped slightly and matted in a standard frame create a piece that reads as both musical and graphic. The staggered arrangement creates depth; using a frame wider than the tallest sheet gives you room to arrange several in a composition.
5. Pressed leaves and botanicals — collected, pressed, mounted. A weekend's collection of leaves, ferns, grasses, or flower heads pressed between heavy books for one to two weeks (or in a purpose-built flower press) mounts cleanly in matted frames. A set of three frames with different pressed botanicals, hung in a vertical or horizontal row, is a finished gallery wall element for the cost of the frames. Collecting from your own garden or a green space is free; the press or books and frames are the only investment.

An afternoon

6. Abstract pour painting — acrylic, pouring medium, a tilted canvas. Acrylic pour painting involves mixing acrylic paint with a pouring medium (available at any art supply shop) until it's the consistency of warm honey, pouring multiple colours onto a canvas, then tilting the canvas to let the colours run and blend. The results are genuinely unpredictable and frequently striking. Standard water-based acrylic paints are non-toxic when wet and safe to use indoors with ordinary ventilation. Protect the work surface thoroughly — pour painting is substantially messier than most techniques. Leave the canvas flat to dry for at least 24 hours after the final pour.
7. Giant typography — one meaningful word, hand-painted large and simply framed. A single word painted large on a canvas or sheet of wood — in a bold typeface with clean edges — reads as a studio art piece when the execution is clean. Use a projector or an overhead projector app to scale up a typeface from a phone onto the canvas and trace the outlines lightly in pencil before painting. Black paint on white, or white on a dark-ground canvas, both work. The discipline is restraint: one word, clean edges, consistent stroke weight.
8. Sharpie mandala on wood — a circle template, patience, a fine marker. A round wood panel (hardware stores sell pre-cut circles; an MDF circle is the affordable option) and a set of fine-tip Sharpie or Staedtler permanent markers are the only materials required. Draw a grid of concentric circles as guides (a compass or stencil set works) and fill the spaces between them with repeated patterns — dots, lines, petals, geometric shapes. Mandalas are forgiving of imperfect lines because the repetition creates coherence. Seal with a matte varnish spray when complete. Note on spray sealing: apply spray varnish or any aerosol spray sealant outdoors or in a fully cross-ventilated space. Solvent vapours from spray cans are heavier than air and accumulate at floor level. OSHA guidance for spray operations requires mechanical ventilation adequate to prevent vapour accumulation; the same applies at home scale.
9. String-art silhouette — nails in a wood board, thread wound across. A design is printed, traced onto a piece of stained or painted wood board, and nails are hammered in a grid following the design outline. Thread or embroidery floss is wound between nails to fill the silhouette with a geometric pattern. Common subjects: city skylines, animals, geometric shapes, numbers. Wear safety glasses when hammering nails — eye protection is the standard recommendation for any hammer-and-nail work where chips or glancing blows are possible (OSHA 29 CFR 1910.243). Pre-drill pilot holes in hardwood to avoid splitting; softwood and MDF don't require it.
10. Fabric wall hanging — triangle of macramé or woven wool. A triangular woven hanging (a frame made from a few sticks of dowel, threaded with wool or cotton roving in a basic over-under weave) is a forgiving craft with striking results even for first attempts. The triangle format means imperfect edges read as fringe rather than mistakes. Neutral colours (cream, oatmeal, sage) sit comfortably in most rooms; a more textured yarn creates more visual interest at the same level of skill.
11. Photo transfer on wood — gel medium moves a printed image onto a wooden plank. Laser-printed images (inkjet prints do not work for this technique) can be transferred onto sanded, sealed wood using acrylic gel medium. Apply a thick layer of gel medium to the wood surface, press the image face-down onto it, and allow it to dry fully (at least 24 hours). Wet the paper with a damp sponge and roll it away, leaving the ink embedded in the gel. The result is a slightly translucent image on wood that looks like it was always there. Acrylic gel medium is water-based and non-toxic.
12. Pressed botanical in resin — flower or leaf in a clear disk. Two-part epoxy resin can preserve a flat pressed flower or leaf in a clear disk or slab that mounts on the wall like a window into the object. The casting takes under an hour plus curing time (24–48 hours). Safety note: uncured two-part epoxy resin requires ventilation and nitrile gloves during mixing and pouring. The resin component and hardener are both skin sensitisers before curing; contact with uncured resin can cause allergic reactions with repeated exposure. Work outdoors or in a cross-ventilated space, wear gloves throughout, and avoid touching your face. Once fully cured, the cast piece is inert and safe to handle without protection.

A weekend

13. Macramé wall hanging — one basic knot, repeated in pattern. Macramé requires a single knot to produce most standard patterns — the square knot, made from four cord lengths. Learning the square knot takes ten minutes; making a 45-cm wide wall hanging with it takes a weekend of relaxed work. Use natural cotton macramé cord (3–5 mm diameter) on a wooden dowel hung from the wall. The imperfections that beginners produce in macramé are largely indistinguishable from the intentional textural variation in professional work, which makes it one of the best ratio-of-result-to-skill crafts in the list.
14. Hand-stencilled wallpaper effect — a single stencil, repeated across a feature wall. A large-scale stencil (geometric, botanical, or abstract) and a small dense-foam roller can produce a professional-looking repeated-pattern feature wall in a day. The technique: roll a thin amount of paint onto the stencil, position it on the wall, roll over it firmly, lift carefully, reposition with consistent spacing. Practice on a large piece of paper first to calibrate paint loading — too much paint bleeds under the stencil edge. This works on any dry, primed wall surface. Note on VOCs: if using spray paint rather than a roller for the stencil, apply only outdoors or with full cross-ventilation; remove ignition sources from the room before spraying. Water-based acrylic applied by roller is the lower-risk technique for indoor use.
15. Paint-by-numbers upgrade — kit version plus your own palette. Standard paint-by-numbers kits provide the structure (a numbered canvas with pre-mixed matching paints) but often produce results in colours that are too bright or don't match the room's palette. The upgrade: buy the kit for the canvas and composition, but mix or substitute paints in your preferred palette — a muted, room-appropriate set of colours produces a result that reads less like a craft kit and more like a considered painting. The numbered guide does all the compositional work; you control the colour register.
16. Framed botanical prints — free downloads, printed, matted in simple frames. The Biodiversity Heritage Library (biodiversitylibrary.org) and the New York Public Library Digital Collections offer thousands of out-of-copyright botanical illustrations in high resolution, free to download and print. Print at a copy shop on matte paper, mat in a standard-sized frame (A4 or letter frames are the most affordable), and hang in a set of three or more. The content reads as antique; the cost is roughly £3–10 per piece including frame.
17. Plate wall — thrift-store plates in a unified colour family, hung with plate hangers. Decorative plates in a unified palette (all blue-and-white, all cream, all terracotta) grouped in a casual arrangement on a wall reads as considered and personal. Plate hangers (spring-loaded wire clips that grip the plate rim) are available in multiple sizes and hang from a single picture hook. The arrangement should be loose and varied in plate size; symmetrical grids of uniform plates look institutional. A central plate with radiating others is a reliable starting composition.
18. Map collage — old maps cut into a geometric pattern. Vintage or reproduction maps (widely available at charity shops, or downloaded in high resolution from copyright-free sources) can be cut into geometric shapes — hexagons, triangles, squares — and arranged in a repeating pattern on a canvas or backing board using decoupage medium (PVA). The finished piece reads as graphic rather than cartographic. Choosing maps of places with personal significance adds meaning to the composition.
19. Geometric wood triangles — painted scrap wood arranged in a tessellation. Triangular pieces of scrap pine or plywood (hardware stores often sell off-cuts cheaply; a mitre saw cuts precise angles, but a hand saw with a mitre block is adequate) painted in a limited palette of three to five colours and arranged in a tessellation pattern on the wall create a substantial piece for the cost of paint. The installation is flexible: the triangles can be arranged and rearranged before any nail goes in, so the composition can be refined before committing.
20. Canvas triptych — three same-sized canvases painted in a unified theme. Three 30×40 cm canvases (or any consistent size) painted as one composition — a landscape that spans all three, an abstract colour field with a shared palette, a botanical series — hung with equal gaps between them functions as a single large work in three parts. The gap between panels is part of the composition; 2–5 cm between panels is standard. Paint all three at the same time with the same palette so the tones are consistent.

Twenty projects; none requiring art training. The gap between a bare wall and the first piece hung is consistently the hardest part — not the skill level of the project itself. For prints and pieces that also work as gifts, easy DIY gift ideas that double as home decor includes several techniques from the same toolkit. For wall art that fits into a broader home improvement approach, budget home decorating ideas with the most visual impact per pound covers the five structural changes that make wall art read better in the first place. And for projects that transform other objects around the home with the same hands-on approach, 31 clever DIY ways to transform everyday objects extends the same mindset to furniture and surfaces.