Most people approach their first piece of original art the way they approach a sofa, by looking for something that fits the room.
The wall is empty, the space feels unfinished, and over time the question changes from what do I actually like into what will match the furniture. The shift is understandable, and it is the reason a great many rooms end up with art that nobody in the house ever really looks at.
Choosing art for your home is a different exercise from decorating, and this guide treats it that way.
In this blog, we cover how to find the work you are genuinely drawn to, how to size and place a piece so it sits properly in a room, how to read what a label is telling you, how to tell an original from a reproduction, and why people invest in original paintings in the first place.
How to buy original art for your home comes down to four steps: identify what you respond to rather than what matches, confirm the medium, check the condition, and measure your wall before you commit. Unlike a reproduction, an original is a unique work, made once by the artist's hand.
Key Takeaways
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Choose work you respond to rather than work that matches the room. A colour scheme can be adapted; a piece you feel nothing about will stay that way.
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The most common confusion in the art market is between original prints and reproductions. Both are commonly sold as "fine art prints."
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Edition size is the quickest guide: original prints are generally issued in the tens or low hundreds, reproductions in the many hundreds or thousands.
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Canadian art is consistently the most sought after by our customers. All else being equal, buyers here prefer it.
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Damage to a canvas, particularly a hole or tear, is the condition problem that matters most. Frame damage is the least concerning, since frames can be replaced.
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Hang art with its centre at roughly eye level, about 145 to 150 cm from the floor, and let the furniture beneath it govern the width.
Why Buy Original Art Instead of Prints?
If you have a choice between an original and a print, and the budget allows for either, there is a good case for the original.
It exists once. The surface carries the marks of how it was made, the texture of the brush or the knife, the places where the artist changed direction. A reproduction records those things as an image but does not have them, and standing in front of the two, the difference is usually clear even to someone who has never thought about it before.
That said, the choice is not always available, and there is nothing wrong with buying a print when it is not. Prints are how most people begin, they make work by artists you could not otherwise own accessible, and a good image on your wall is better than an empty wall while you wait. Plenty of serious collections started with a print and grew from there.
What matters is knowing which of the two you are buying, because the word "print" is doing a great deal of work in the art market, and not always honestly.
Original prints and reproductions are not the same thing
An original print is a work the artist conceived as a print. The artist makes the plate, screen, block, or stone, and the printing is done by hand, usually in a studio or a printmaking workshop under the artist's supervision. Etchings, serigraphs (screenprints), woodcuts, and hand-pulled stone lithographs all belong to this category. These are physical processes: in etching, the artist incises lines into a metal plate with acid, and in screenprinting ink is pushed through a mesh screen by hand. Edition sizes are small, typically in the tens or low hundreds, and each impression is pulled individually. The work exists as a print because that is what the artist intended it to be.
A reproduction is a photograph of an artwork that already exists in another medium, printed on a commercial press. Offset lithography is a photo-mechanical process: the image is photographed, transferred to plates, and run through an offset press, the same technology used for magazines and posters. The artist may sign it afterwards, and it may carry an edition number, but neither of those makes it an original work. Editions frequently run into the high hundreds or thousands.
Both are regularly described as "fine art prints," which is where the confusion begins.
How to tell them apart
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Check the edition size. This is the fastest test. An edition of 50 or 150 points to an original print. An edition of 950 or 2,500 indicates a reproduction, whatever the accompanying certificate says.
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Look at the surface under magnification. Offset printing leaves a regular pattern of dots arranged in rows. A hand-pulled print will not show this.
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Feel the ink. On a screenprint or a stone lithograph, the ink sits slightly raised on the paper. On an offset reproduction it is flat.
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Look for a plate mark. Etchings and other intaglio prints are pressed hard enough to leave an indentation in the paper around the image.
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Treat a signature as one piece of evidence, not proof. A pencil signature and a number in the margin can appear on either kind of print.
None of this makes reproductions worthless as objects. A well-framed reproduction of an image you love is a perfectly reasonable thing to own, and many people are happy with one. The point is simply to know which of the two you are buying, and to pay accordingly.
Finding Your Style Before You Shop
Most advice for beginners buying art begins with periods and movements. It is more useful to begin with yourself, and the preparation costs nothing. Spend an hour looking at a large amount of art with no intention of buying any of it, and pay attention to what holds you rather than to what you feel you ought to admire.
A few things worth noticing as you look:
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Subject or treatment. Some people respond to what a work depicts, others to how the paint has been handled, regardless of subject. Knowing which you are saves a great deal of time later.
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Quiet or commanding. A piece you will live with every day asks for something different from a piece meant to anchor a room. Both are worth owning, but they belong on different walls.
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What recurs. If you find yourself returning to landscapes, or to a particular range of colour, that is useful information about your taste rather than a limit on it.
The advice to buy what you love is offered so frequently that it has lost some of its meaning, but the practical version holds. A work chosen because it suited a colour scheme tends to stop registering within a year. A work chosen because you kept returning to it will still hold your attention a decade later, and most rooms can be arranged around it.
Sizing and Placing Art in a Room
When choosing art for your home, two errors account for most disappointing results: hanging it too high or buying too small.
Height. Hang a work so its centre sits at roughly eye level, which in practice means about 145 to 150 cm from the floor to the middle of the piece. Galleries use this convention because it suits how people actually look at art. Hanging higher, usually an attempt to centre the piece within the wall rather than relative to a viewer, tends to leave the work floating above the room.
Width relative to furniture. Over a sofa, sideboard, or bed, aim for a piece around two-thirds to three-quarters the width of the furniture below it. Narrower and the work looks stranded; wider and it overwhelms.
Distance above furniture. Leave roughly 15 to 25 cm between the top of the furniture and the bottom of the frame, so the two read as a single arrangement.
Large walls. One large work generally does more than several small ones spread out to fill the space. If your pieces are smaller, group them closely and treat the group as a single rectangle, with consistent gaps of 5 to 8 cm between frames.
Light. Keep works on paper and older canvases out of direct sunlight. Fading cannot be reversed, and it is the most common avoidable damage in a home collection.
Measure before you shop. Take the wall width, the furniture width, and the ceiling height with you. Scale is difficult to judge in a showroom, where ceilings are usually higher than at home and pieces tend to look smaller than they will once hung.
Reading a Gallery Label: Artist, Medium, Provenance
A label or catalogue entry should tell you four things. If any are missing, it is reasonable to ask.
Artist. The name, and ideally dates and nationality. "Attributed to" indicates that the attribution is considered probable but is not established, which is a meaningful difference from a signed and documented work.
Medium. Oil on canvas, acrylic on board, watercolour on paper, etching, serigraph. This tells you both what you are buying and how it will need to be cared for. Vague descriptions are worth questioning, since terms like "mixed media" and "art print" cover a great deal of ground.
Dimensions. Usually, the image size, sometimes the framed size as well. It is worth checking which you have been given.
Provenance. The ownership history of the work. Complete provenance is uncommon for most pieces and its absence is not in itself a concern, but for significant works it matters, and for anything substantial it should be documented.
What Condition Problems Actually Matter
Not all damage carries the same weight, and it helps to know which problems are worth stepping away from.
Damage to the canvas is the most serious. Holes and tears are the worst outcome for a painting. They can sometimes be conserved, but the work is skilled, the repair is rarely invisible under close inspection, and the piece is permanently affected. A hole is usually a reason to pass, unless the work is genuinely important and you are prepared for conservation.
Surface problems sit in between. Craquelure, the fine network of cracks that develops in aged oil paint, is normal in older work and is generally not a defect. Flaking or lifting paint is a different matter and needs attention. On works on paper, look for foxing (small rust-coloured spots), yellowing, and rippling, which usually indicate humidity or acidic framing materials.
Frame damage matters least. A chipped or scuffed frame is the least concerning problem here, because frames can be replaced and, in practice, people buy the work rather than its frame. A tired frame is not a reason to pass on a piece you like, and an impressive one is not a reason to pay more.
If you are assessing a work you already own rather than one you are considering buying, our guide to art consignment in Toronto explains how condition affects what a piece will realistically sell for.
Why Canadian Art Is Worth Looking At
If there is one consistent pattern in what moves through our showroom, it is the strength of interest in Canadian work. All things being equal, our customers prefer an original by a Canadian artist to comparable work from anywhere else.
That preference is worth knowing, whichever side of the transaction you are on. For a buyer, it means the Canadian market is deep and active, with a great deal more available than the handful of names most people can list. For someone with art to sell, it means Canadian work generally finds a home more readily here than international work of similar quality.
Our posts on Canadian fine art and Inuit art are a good starting point if you want to look further into the field.
Budgeting for Original Art
Original art is more affordable than most people expect, particularly for anyone willing to look beyond the primary gallery market. Work by living artists without major representation, original prints by established names, and secondary-market pieces by artists whose reputations are currently quiet all sit well below what the phrase "original art" tends to suggest.
A few practical points are worth keeping in mind. Decide on a ceiling before you start looking, since a figure set in advance is much easier to hold than one arrived at while standing in front of something you want. Allow for framing, which is a genuine cost and easily forgotten, particularly for works on paper that need proper glazing and acid-free mounting. And where the choice arises, one piece you actively want will serve a room better than three that are merely acceptable.
Why People Invest in Original Paintings
People buy original paintings for several overlapping reasons, and it is worth separating them, because they lead to different decisions.
For the experience of living with the work. This is the reason most collections actually get built. A painting is one of the few things a household acquires that continues to reveal something over years of looking. That return is real, even though it never appears on a statement.
For a connection to an artist, a place, or a period. Original work carries the circumstances of its making. A Canadian landscape from the middle of the last century is a record of how a particular painter saw a particular place at a particular moment, and owning it is a form of custodianship as much as ownership.
To support artists and the wider art community. Buying original work, whether from a living artist or on the secondary market, keeps the field active in a way that buying reproductions does not.
As a tangible asset. Investing in original paintings differs from most holdings in one obvious respect: a painting can be enjoyed while it is held. Some works do appreciate over time, generally driven by an artist's growing reputation, the scarcity of comparable pieces, documented provenance, and sound condition.
That last point deserves care. Appreciation in art is genuinely unpredictable, and it depends on factors nobody can forecast reliably, including changes in taste that have nothing to do with the quality of the work. Plenty of art holds its value, plenty does not, and a piece can be excellent without ever becoming more sought after. For that reason, the approach most collectors settle on is to buy work they want to live with, look after it properly, keep whatever documentation comes with it, and treat any increase in value as a secondary benefit rather than the purpose of the purchase. The one certainty is the first reason on this list.
Buying Consigned and Pre-Owned Art in Toronto
Seeing art in person matters more for this category than for almost any other. Surface, scale, and condition are all things photographs handle poorly. A canvas that appears flat online shows its brushwork in the room, and a repair that is invisible in a listing photograph is usually apparent in raking light.
Buying original artwork in Toronto through consignment works differently from buying at a gallery or through a marketplace.
We carry a substantial and continually changing collection of original art, spanning Canadian and international work, older and more recent pieces, framed and unframed. Because everything is consigned, the art collection turns over constantly rather than being restocked to a fixed range, so it is worth returning periodically rather than assuming you have seen what we have.
If you have art to sell rather than to buy, our team assesses works for artist, medium, condition, and current demand before offering consignment terms.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the difference between original art and a print?
An original is a unique work made by the artist. A print may be either an original print, where the artist made the plate or screen and the printing was done by hand in a small edition, or a reproduction, which is a photographic copy of an existing artwork printed on a commercial press in large numbers. Both are often sold as "fine art prints."
How can I tell if a print is an original or a reproduction?
Check the edition size first. Originals are generally issued in the tens or low hundreds, reproductions in the many hundreds or thousands. Then examine the surface under magnification: offset reproductions show a regular pattern of dots in rows, while hand-pulled prints do not. Raised ink and a plate mark both indicate an original print.
Does a signature mean a print is valuable?
Not on its own. Reproductions are frequently signed and numbered after printing. A signature indicates that the artist handled the sheet, not that they made the image as a print.
Is original art a good investment?
Some original works appreciate and many do not, and appreciation depends on factors that are difficult to predict, including shifts in taste. Artist reputation, scarcity, documented provenance, and condition all support long-term value. Most collectors buy work they want to live with and treat any increase in value as a secondary benefit.
What should I check before buying original art?
The artist, the medium, the dimensions, the condition, and any provenance or restoration history. Ask specifically about repairs to the canvas or support, since those affect a work more than surface wear does.
What condition problems matter most in a painting?
Damage to the canvas itself, particularly holes and tears, is the most serious. Flaking paint needs attention. Frame damage matters least, since frames can be replaced.
Where can I buy original artwork in Toronto?
Consignment showrooms like Around the Block, galleries, art fairs, and studio sales all carry original work. Seeing a piece in person matters more for art than for most categories, since surface, scale, and condition are difficult to judge from a photograph.
How high should I hang art?
With the centre of the piece at roughly eye level, about 145 to 150 cm from the floor. Over furniture, leave 15 to 25 cm between the top of the furniture and the bottom of the frame.
