Spring Refresh: Wall Art, Mirrors and Greenery That Change a Room in an Afternoon

You do not need a new sofa to make a room feel new. You need the wall above it, the light in it, and something green in the corner — and one free afternoon. This is the spring refresh our showroom team talks customers through every September: no furniture moves, no painting, no trades. Wall art hung at the right size and height, a mirror placed where it can actually catch the light, greenery that does not look artificial, lighter textiles, and a scent that says the season has changed. Here is how to do it properly, with the measurements, in one afternoon.

The afternoon-refresh premise

The big pieces in a living room — the lounge, the coffee table, the rug — set the room's bones. They should not change often, and in spring they do not need to. What dates a room between seasons is everything at eye level and above: bare walls, a mirror hung where it reflects a blank wall, heavy winter throws, a corner with nothing in it. Those are the things you can change in the time it takes to make lunch and clear up afterwards, and they are also the things visitors notice first, because the eye goes to walls and light before it goes to furniture.

The rule for the whole afternoon: fix scale first, then light, then texture, then scent. Get the order wrong — cushions before art — and you will style around a problem instead of solving it.

Wall art: the three numbers that make it look right

Most wall art in Australian homes is hung too small and too high. Both problems are measurable and both are fixable in ten minutes with a tape and a pencil.

Width: two-thirds to three-quarters of the furniture below. Art above a sofa, bed or console should span roughly 66 to 75 per cent of that piece's width. A 230cm three-seater wants a canvas — or a grouping — around 150 to 175cm wide. A 120cm console wants 80 to 90cm. Under two-thirds, the piece floats and the wall looks unfinished; over the furniture's full width, it overhangs and looks wrong.

Height: centre at 145–150cm from the floor. That is gallery height, and it is where the midpoint of a canvas should sit on an open wall. The reason art so often feels "too high" is that it was hung to the ceiling rather than to the eye.

Above furniture: 20–25cm of clear wall. When a canvas hangs over a sofa or sideboard, the gap between the top of the furniture and the bottom of the frame should be about 20 to 25cm. Closer and it looks cramped; wider and the two stop reading as one arrangement. If the two rules conflict — they often do over a tall bedhead — the gap rule wins.

Browse the full Wall Art Collection with those three numbers written down, and you will shortlist in minutes rather than hours.

One large canvas or a grouping?

One large canvas is the calmer choice, and the one most rooms are secretly built for. A single piece at 200 × 120cm sits correctly above a 2.6 to 3m three-seater or a wide sideboard, and it replaces five smaller things arranged around a gap. The Gold Atlantic does this in warm gold and calm blue in a gold frame; the Glamour does it in black and white with gold foil, for a room with a darker lounge; the Dalton does it in chalk white, soft grey, navy and antique gold in a slim black frame, and arrives with hooks fitted for both landscape and portrait, so the same piece can move from above the sofa to the entry wall when the room changes. All three are in the X-Large Canvas collection.

A grouping suits a wall that is wider than 1.5m but where a two-metre canvas would be too much, and it suits narrow walls between windows or beside doorways where a landscape piece will never fit. The trick is to treat the group as one shape: keep 10 to 15cm between frames, hang the whole arrangement as if it were a single canvas obeying the width and height rules above, and keep the frame finishes in one family. A pair of portrait pieces like the Neutral Floral — white blooms on a warm oatmeal ground with vertical gold leaf, 83 × 123cm — hung side by side reads better on a wide wall than either would alone. The Large Canvas and Small Canvas collections cover the mid and small sizes for groupings.

Abstract or landscape? For a room that needs to feel calmer in spring, abstract usually wins, because it gives the eye colour and movement without a subject to read. A landscape or floral is right when the rest of the room is plain and needs a focal point. If the lounge is already a strong colour, choose art in a narrow palette that shares one tone with it — the gold in a frame picking up gold legs, the green in the Sage canvas picking up a green velvet chair.

Mirrors: put the light where you want it

A mirror is the cheapest way to add a window to a room, but only if it faces one. Hang it opposite or diagonally across from your main window and it throws daylight to the back of the room and doubles the view. Hang it on the window wall and it reflects the dimmest part of the house.

Spring is when this matters most: the sun is higher, the light is longer, and a mirror placed correctly makes a south-facing living room feel like it changed orientation. A tall free-standing arch leaned against the wall beside a window is the single most effective light move we know — only the free-standing size is built to lean; the larger sizes are wall-mounted. Our arch mirror guide covers the sizes, the hallway proportions and the styling in detail, so we will not repeat it here — start with the Arch Mirrors collection and the Metal Arch Mirror in black or gold, or the Round Mirrors if the wall above a console is short and wide. The full Mirror Collection is sorted by shape and style.

One honest caveat: a mirror opposite the television reflects the television. Check the sight-lines from the sofa before you drill.

Greenery that does not look artificial

Artificial plants have a bad reputation because most of them earn it. The ones that read as real share three things: natural, slightly uneven colouring; a shape that has gaps in it; and a scale that matches a real plant of the same kind. The ones that read as fake are bright, glossy, dense and small.

Tall stems in a floor vase. The fastest spring move in the whole afternoon. Our cherry blossom stem at 125cm is a tall branching spray in white or pink, made for floor vases and entry urns where a shorter stem disappears; two or three together, or paired with the 49cm single stems for a layered arrangement, is enough for a corner. For something quieter, the willow branch — a warm brown stem with soft white buds, 80cm — clustered three or five to a tall narrow vase gives the sculptural, foraged look without the water. Both pair naturally with green glass: the Oscar, a rounded green vase with a dimpled hobnail texture, and the Tabby, a taller pleated-ribbed green glass, work as a tonal pair on a console or dining table. More vessels are in Vases & Ginger Jars, and our trays and vases styling guide covers the coffee-table arrangement.

A tree in the corner. The olive pot plant is the one we recommend most, because it has the open, upright habit of a real olive — light passes through the canopy and it throws a broken shadow on the wall rather than sitting there as a block of green. It comes at 120cm and 200cm. The 200cm is furniture: allow a clear 60 to 70cm square of floor, stand it 15 to 20cm off the wall so the back branches are not crushed, and drop its plain white pot into a woven basket or fluted planter. The 120cm reads undersized on a bare floor in a large room; lift it on a 40 to 50cm stand or stool and it holds a corner properly. The fiddle leaf at 110cm arrives already in a woven basket and fills a living-room corner or an entry straight from the box.

Where fake reads as fake. Bright plastic flowers in saturated colours, small plants on high shelves where nobody would put a real one, and anything glossy under a downlight. Keep artificial greenery at floor level or table level, in the places a real plant would plausibly live, and dust it — dust is the giveaway. Everything above is in Artificial Plants & Planters.

Lighter textiles and a change of scent

Cushions and throws. Winter cushions are velvet, chunky knit and dark. Spring cushions are lighter in both senses: linen-look and cotton weaves, white, sand, sage and soft blue, and fewer of them. Take the throw off the arm of the sofa and fold one lighter one over the back of a single chair instead. If the lounge is velvet, keep one velvet cushion for continuity and swap the rest — the Cushions & Throw Rugs collection has both weights.

Scent. The last thing you do and the first thing anyone entering the room notices. Swap the heavy winter candle for a floral or citrus one, or a reed diffuser on the console where the air moves. Our Candles & Diffusers collection covers both, and a diffuser in a cherry blossom scent beside the blossom stems is the kind of small, deliberate match that makes a room feel considered rather than decorated. The wider Home Décor range is where the trays, candle holders and small objects live.

The three-step afternoon plan

Step one, 12pm — walls. Take down anything hung too small or too high. Measure the sofa and the console, work out the two-thirds width, mark 145 to 150cm on the wall for the centre, and hang the canvas or the group. Then move the mirror to face the window. This is the hard hour and it changes the room more than everything that follows.

Step two, 2pm — green and glass. Place the tree in the corner the room has been leaving empty, stems in the floor vase by the entry or beside the lounge, and the two green glass vases on the console or dining table. Stand back and remove one thing — spring rooms are lighter because there is less in them.

Step three, 3pm — soft and scent. Swap the cushions, fold the winter throws away, light the candle or set the diffuser. Open the windows for twenty minutes. Done.

See the scale before you buy

Wall art and greenery are the two things people most often get wrong online, for the same reason: a two-metre canvas and a two-metre olive tree both look modest in a product photo and enormous in a small room. Our four showrooms have the canvases hung on real walls and the trees standing on real floors, seven days a week: Braybrook, Dandenong South and Truganina in Melbourne, and Auburn in Sydney.

Bring the width of your sofa, the width of the wall above it, and a photo of the corner you want to fill. Bring a cushion from the lounge if you are matching a colour. Our team will show you the canvas at full size next to a sofa of the same length, put a stem in a vase so you can see the height, and tell you honestly if the 200cm tree is going to fold over under your ceiling. It is an hour in store that saves an afternoon of returns.