A house isnt anything remarkable until the paintings are up. Until then you can decorate with all the most luxurious finishes, fabrics, and pieces of furniture available, but you will only have a showroom. I find this every time I install a project.To me the relationship between art and interiors is a dance, one that should be more Fred and Ginger than either Tom and Jerry or Gilbert and George. The art and the interior need to complement one another, not fight or match. Its common to buy art around the same time that you are decorating a house, and it can be easy to find yourself buying to fit spaces. Its more important, though, that the art connects with you, rather than just fitting the house. The place to put it will come. If youre buying something so large that you need to identify the spot first, do so, but otherwise you must relate to it before the room does.Recently I was working on a house in the Hamptons. My client and I had bought a large 1970s photograph of a beach in Rio de Janeiro for my clients wife, who is Brazilian. I intended for the picture to go in their bedroom. On the day we were hanging, however, it found its spot on a wall in the main living room over the bar. It was totally unplanned that the colors in the picture would sit so well in the space. That serendipity elevated the room from something pretty to something that sung. We can tie ourselves in knots trying to coordinate things, but the best outcomes are often with elements that work together but dont match. Pierre BergianI have no trouble hanging pictures on either strong colors or patterns. When I renovated my apartment I chose a Havana brown for the walls in my living roompartly because its so warm in the evening, but also because I think its such a good color to hang pictures on. The room had been a pale, dirty pink, with pictures hung floor to ceiling. This time I wanted something more spare. I always admire the way Veere Grenney hangs one thing on a wall and leaves it be. In my sitting room at home I have now stacked no more than two pictures with a large one in between. I find this very restful, and I love the bright colors in the pictures against the cigar-colored linen on the walls. Dark colors are amazing; earth tones are almost always very goodespecially browns and burnt siennas. I also love pea green. The color I find the hardest is white. At night it can be very gloomy, so I usually tend toward a creamier white. "Pictures must be able to move around, even if they never do."I have just been rehanging a room with unbelievable paintings. The room is copy-paper-white, and I was sure we would have to repaint it something softer. But once we had all the pictures on the right walls, and the furniture organized sympathetically in the room, it actually worked very well with the art. Picture hanging is often all about the right wall rather than the color of it. I love finding that space that the painting sits in peacefully more than anything, actually. On the same day we took another really good piece from the sitting room and put it in a corridor. This is the oddest-sounding thing, but now when you sit in the study and look through the double doors to the vestibule outside, youre met with this beautiful pieceit has extended the room. Sometimes the best walls are the most unexpected ones. One of the joys of pictures is that they are mobile. They must be able to move around even if they never do, so its best not to decorate a room to a painting. No one does pictures floor to ceiling better than Robin Birley. He even hangs pictures on doors! But this is a symptom of his rampant collecting rather than his desire to fill every inch of vertical real estate. Buying pictures for gallery walls is all wrong, and one can tell when walls have been propped out rather than filled with things that have been collected. I didnt think Id smother a wall with pictures again at home, but I succumbed in the end. I have started one up my staircase, partly because I had so many pictures left over and partly because my staircase felt like an elevator shaft and needed urgent care. The result makes it feel cozy, and at the same time it opens it up because you arent looking at a blank wall. If I had to pick one person to reference in terms of hanging art in beautiful rooms, it would be Bunny Mellon. She had important art as well as whimsical collections, and she used scale to great effectsomething tiny above a mantel and something whoppinglike a Rothko in a barnlike room. I think her skill (apart from having great taste and a huge budget) was to be unafraid, which comes from loving it all. This must be the secret, because I think what draws us all to her style is how comfortable and unstuffy her houses were. And that is because she knew instinctively how art and interiors could dance together, and even at what tempo.