You don't have to own an art gallery to enjoy beautiful artwork. Displaying pieces in the privacy of your home can be a great way to decorate rooms with the things you love. If you are a professional designer, you will probably avoid the pitfalls that plague many amateurs, but even amateurs can take some simple steps to ensure their contemporary art displays are effective and pleasurable.

Nine times out of ten, if a person is going to make a mistake hanging artwork, it will be putting it too high on the wall. Once a piece is above eye level, the viewer gets the sensation that the artwork is actually floating. If you are guilty of hanging pieces too high, try taking them down with a friend and, while one determines the optimal height, the other one can hang.

When people see a work that doesn't fit the scale of the room, it makes many of them uncomfortable. This is also a common mistake, but one that is easy to fix by enlarging a matte and frame or adding other pieces in a collage. Your other choice is to hang a piece that is either so small or so large for the space that it seems like you did it on purpose.

Everyone has friends and family members who think everything in their house has to match exactly. This includes the artwork they put on the walls. The mistake here is that when everything blends in, you don't really see anything. On the other end of the spectrum, you don't want to hang something that is so jarringly out of place, it dominates the room for all the wrong reasons.

Wallpapering your walls with artwork isn't a good idea either. With too many pieces, viewers' eyes get confused and don't know where to focus. If you have invested in nice artwork, you want people to be able to enjoy it. It needs room to stand on its own. Walls over filled with art tend to end up looking like a store with cheap prints for sale.

Your artwork doesn't have to be totally eclectic. It is fine to know what you like and buy it, but you can still vary the pieces by color, subject, and artist for instance. There is a fine line between pulling a room together with your wall hangings and creating a boring room because there is not enough diversity.

Collages can be difficult to pull off. The most common mistake people make is to just start hammering nails into the wall and hanging pieces without any thought to the design. You should consider drawing a plan down on paper or laying the different pieces down on the floor where you can move them around easily.

Artwork is a great way to create warm, inviting, and interesting interiors. The pieces you select for your walls say a lot about you, your style, and your taste. You don't need the services of a professional to create the designs. You just need to avoid common mistakes and trust your instincts.