News

Signarture Wins Best of Houzz 2019

We are thrilled to start 2019 by sharing the news that Signarture has been awarded Best of Houzz for a sixth successive year.

The award is determined by a variety of factors, including the number and quality of recent reviews from clients. Signarture has consistently received 5-star ratings from their clients and several images of their artworks are among the most popular in the Artwork category as voted by the 40 million active members of the global Houzz community.

We're very grateful to those clients who took the time to write their reviews that earned us the award. We've also earned a couple of other Houzz badges of recommendation, acknowledging that our professional design knowledge and advice is highly valued.

"Best of Houzz is a true badge of honour as it is awarded by our community of homeowners, those who are hiring design, renovation and other home improvement professionals for their projects,” said Tony Been, APAC Country Manager of Houzz. “We are excited to celebrate the 2019 winners chosen by our community as their favourites for home design and customer experience, and to highlight those winners on the Houzz website and app."

Houzz is the leading platform for home renovation and design, providing people with everything they need to improve their homes from start to finish – online or from a mobile device. It provides not only inspiration for your next renovation or redecorating project, but an easy way to connect with the design professionals who can help turn that into reality.

Thank you to all our clients, and thank you Houzz!

Check it out here: http://www.houzz.com/pro/signarture

The Easy Way to an Introduce Greenery

Bringing the outside in is an enduring trend contributing to Pantone's choice of Greenery as the colour of 2017. If you're lucky enough to be surrounded by lush, natural greenery, then employing floor to ceiling glass or expansive windows to connect you to nature may be all you need.

But where the views are more challenging, and that connection to nature is lost, introducing living green walls, botanically-themed wallpaper, artworks or accent pieces is the way to go.

And whilst painting or wallpapering takes plenty of preparation and a fair chunk of time if you're going to do it yourself, hanging an artwork takes less than an hour, has an immediate impact and a transformative effect on your space.

If you didn't get around to it over the Christmas / New year break, then the four day Easter holiday is often seen as the perfect opportunity to inject some new life into your home - the literal meaning of 'renovate'.

Finding that artwork that you love, complements your colour scheme, and is available in the right size for your space now takes a lot less time. You won't need to walk into a hundred gallery spaces searching for the one.

With our bespoke approach, Signarture solves all your usual artwork dilemmas by making it possible for you to order exactly the combination of artwork / colour / shape and size you need.

If you fall in love with any of our designs, you can very easily make it your own by customising it to suit your space.

There are many more than fifty shades of green, but what ever shade of green you like - fir, spruce, moss, jade, teal, apple, emerald - you'll find they are all super easy to specify.

Where to Hang Artworks to Best Effect

When you've invested time and money in choosing artworks you love, you'll want to ensure that you hang them where they can be positioned to best advantage. Here are our tips to make the most of your investment.

1. Positioning relative to Room Layout

Step into your home and then into each room with fresh and critical eyes. Artworks create dynamic focal points so you want to position them accordingly

• where they will be seen on first entering your home and in spaces where they'll be admired when entertaining
• where you will enjoy them most - from your favourite chair, or perhaps whilst you're propped up in bed

2. Positioning relative to Furniture

Think about their positioning in relation to the furnishings in the room. All but the very largest artworks work best anchored to a piece of furniture

• centred above a table or sofa, rather than centred to the mid point of a wall
• but over a long, low credenza or shelving, asymmetrically balanced by other elements and objets d'art
• or along stretches of open wall, again hang well to the left or right of the midpoint

3. Positioning relative to Other Artworks

Don't make the mistake of hanging artworks at different levels - unless of course you're aiming to create a 'rogue's gallery'. And don't make the all too common mistake of hanging them too high.

• no matter how big or how small, artworks that share the same wall should share the same centre line - the height at which the centre of the work is placed relative to the floor.
• this is usually between 150 and 160 cm, or 50' and 63" in imperial terminology, depending somewhat on your own height: the idea being that, at a normal viewing distance, your eye gaze is falls naturally on the mid point of the artwork. 

Of course, whilst the above may be rules of thumb, they're not hard and fast and as with every rule, there are the exceptions that break them.

If you have a very large work, anything over 140cm high, you may well want to hang it lower than you might otherwise, so that it keeps a relationship with the floor. And with larger works, architectural features such as the top of doorways / openings often provide a better anchor to align the top edge of  an artwork.

Sometimes it's best left to the professionals. 

In major capital cities across Australia, we can arrange installation by professional fine art installers at the time of ordering your artwork.

Please just get in contact to arrange.

The Art of Making Others Fall in Love with a Home

The arrival of Spring usually heralds a significant increase in the number of homes on the market. Whether looking to rent or to buy, or sometimes just to sticky beak, after a winter in hibernation, buyers are more motivated to head out to inspect apartments and houses all across the country. 

If you're the seller then you'll want your home to look it's best and artworks play a major role in that. If you're not able to hire the services of a professional property stylist, then these are the five guiding principles you'll want to take note of:

1. Location, location, location: it's vital to consider where buyers eyes will fall as they enter the home and enter each room. You want to draw their attention to the home's best features and this is where you position your artworks.

2. Less is more: whilst bare walls are definitely the most uninviting option, leaving a space feeling cold and unwelcoming, you do need to limit the number of pieces that you display to maintain that all important uncluttered feeling.

3. Size matters: a common mistake is to select artworks that are too small for the room or for the scale of the adjacent furnishings. At the same time you don't want artworks to dominate - they shouldn't be wider than any furniture below them.

4. Know your market: consider the overall style of your home and which buyers it will appeal to. If you keep the style of the artworks consistent with that, you will ensure it resonates even more strongly with your target market.

5. Keep it impersonal: do remember to remove any family photos and portraits - buyers and tenants alike want to be able to picture themselves and their family in the home, not you and yours.  

The right sized artworks, in a style that complements that of the home, positioned for maximum impact really do make all the difference when it comes to creating that all important first impression.

We recently received this feedback from a client in Melbourne who realised the importance of artwork in making buyers fall in love with their home that they were preparing to put on the market:

" I wanted to get in touch and let you know we are very happy with the artwork - we love it! It certainly made a statement when people entered our home and we had a very successful result at auction on the weekend - very proud of how our home presented and the statement the artwork made". 

How to Measure Up for the Perfect Size Artwork

One of the benefits of our bespoke approach to creating your artwork is that you get to choose the size and shape that works best for your space.

Given the choice, you might be left wondering which size and shape will actually suit best. Here's a quick and easy way to help you decide using lo-tack masking tape -the type painters use- cheap and readily available from any hardware store.

1. Cut two strips to the length of the maximum width of artwork you think you might like, and another two to the length of the maximum height. NB: You might want to refer to our standard artwork sizes, but we can create any size you want.
2. Fix these strips to the wall to outline the position where you will be placing the artwork.
3. Take a photo straight on that shows the outlined artwork in context, and maybe another from a common approach angle.
4. Repeat the process with smaller sizes and different shapes as necessary
5. Compare your photos. Get a second opinion from a friend with eye for these things, or share them with us and we'll give you our professional opinion.

As a rule artworks look best hung with their centre at eye level - or about 150-160cm from the floor -or with their top edge aligned with the top of door frames where these exist on the same wall.

Square and rectangular pieces suit a variety of spaces. Our larger sizes are ideal for open plan spaces, or rooms with really high ceilings where smaller artworks are just dwarfed by the scale.

Our panoramic pieces are a great option for placement above pieces of furniture from beds and sofas to sideboards and console tables. In fact we designed these to sit perfectly behind double, queen or king size beds, 2, 2.5 and 3 seat sofas.

It's a common mistake to buy artworks that are too small for today's open plan spaces - hopefully these tips will save you from that.

Highly Recommended + Top Houzz Influencer

We are delighted to have received two further awards from the Houzz community, and according to the advice letter we received "that's a really big deal". Time to break out the champagne!

The Influencer badge is awarded to design professionals whose advice and knowledgeable posts are most appreciated by the Houzz community. 

The Recommended badge only goes to the top-rated professionals on Houzz.

As at the end of 2015, Houzz was reported as having 35 million unique monthly visitors worldwide, with over 1 million design professionals, such as Signarture, active on the platform.

Signarture was the 15th most recommended of some 35,000 Artists and Artisans worldwide, and the top recommended of some 800 within Australia.

If you're renovating or redecorating, we highly recommend Houzz as a your go to resource for inspiration, advice and discovering the right professionals to bring your dreams to fruition. Be warned, it can be addictive!

View our Houzz profile here: http://www.houzz.com/pro/signarture

Art 'to go with the Sofa'...

If you're looking for art 'to go with your sofa', or indeed a sofa to go with your art, the Sculpture Objects Functional Art and Design Fair - SOFA - is not the place to start!

This inspirational annual exhibition of three-dimensional artworks that cross the boundaries of fine art, decorative art and design returns to Chicago again this week from November 5-8. An elite selection of international dealers present one-of-a-kind masterworks in custom-designed gallery exhibits, and whilst everyone is welcome to browse, the price-points will be well beyond the reach of all but a minority of serious art and design collectors. 

For most of us there is necessarily pragmatic requirement to find artworks that we love and will suit that space on the wall that is so often directly behind our sofa or lounge suite.

What determines the perfect proportions?

Of course, whilst there are no absolute rules with art, it's whatever makes you happy, but the dimensions of your sofa can act as your guide:

• Firstly, the width of the sofa - is it a two seater, a three seater or a modular or sectional sofa? Your artworks should be at least 75% the width of your sofa, and whilst a single large work will always look good, a diptych above a 2 seat sofa or a triptych above a three seat sofa is a great option.
• Secondly, at what height do the back cushions sit? If you have a contemporary, low back design, then you'll need more height in the artwork than if you have a high back couch above which a long, narrow piece will work proportionately better.

We designed the standard panoramic and rectangular sizes within our signarture range to cover these two scenarios respectively, but as we create each artwork bespoke, we also offer custom sizes to suit your particular requirements. 

Pictured is 'noosa' from our outside in collection, created as a 700 x 2100 'panoramic' canvas, perfect above the low backed, couch, and the interior designer reinforced it's impact by repeating colours within the artwork in the accent cushions - one of the seven techniques we described last week.

Enjoy browsing our collections for something 'to go with your sofa', or browsing the galleries at SOFA for something to add to your collection!