ARA, Your Art Room Assistant: Ready Before You Are
Meet ARA: Built for buying art, browsing art, or simply wondering, “What if I put that one there?”
I used to make room mockups for people who were interested in my work. Send me a photo of your wall, tell me which artwork you liked, and I would show you roughly how it could look in your space.
There was just one thing I never really liked about that process.
I noticed that some people felt a little hesitant to ask me for a mockup. And I understood why. Even when I said it was completely without obligation, I could imagine it might not quite feel that way. I had spent time making something especially for them, and perhaps that created a tiny sense that they should do something in return.
I know the feeling myself. Sometimes I don’t want assistance. I don’t want someone looking over my shoulder while I decide (or not). I want to browse, try something, change my mind, try something ridiculous, go back to the first option and perhaps leave without buying anything at all.
Think of walking into a clothes shop and immediately hearing: “HELLO! CAN I HELP YOU? WHAT ARE YOU LOOKING FOR?”
Please. I just walked in. 😳
That was one of the ideas behind ARA:
What if you could make the mockup yourself?
No asking. No waiting. Nobody watching. And no feeling that you ought to buy something afterwards because somebody spent time helping you.
ARA lets you play with my art in a room, including your own. Try different artworks. Change the size. Try another frame. Move it around. See what happens when the light changes. Put it above the sofa. Decide it looks terrible there. Put something else there instead.
You can be seriously considering a purchase.
Or you can just be curious. It doesn’t matter!
ARA is ready before you are.
What you’ll find in this guide:
1. What is ARA?
A quick introduction to the **Art Room Assistant**, what it does and why I built it.
2. Start with a room
Use one of ARA’s rooms or upload a photo of your own space.
3. Choose your artwork
Browse the available art and see it directly in the room.
4. Find the right size
Compare available sizes and see how dramatically scale can change the feel of both the artwork and the room.
5. Frames, position and perspective
Try the available framing options, move the artwork around and adjust it so it actually belongs on that wall.
6. Make your own room accurate
Use ARA’s measuring tools to give it a real-world reference and get the scale right.
7. Light and foreground objects
Adjust how the artwork sits in the room and let objects such as furniture, plants and lamps naturally appear in front of it.
8. Found one you love?
Go straight from ARA to the corresponding artwork and selected option in the shop.
9. And what if you’re just looking?
Excellent. That’s rather the point.
1. What is ARA?
ARA stands for Art Room Assistant. It is a tool I built to let you see my artwork in a room before deciding whether it belongs in yours. You can start with one of the rooms already available in ARA, or upload a photo of your own. From there, you can browse the artwork, try different sizes and frames, move it around the wall and adjust things such as perspective and light.
And yes, you are absolutely allowed to play.
Try the artwork you would normally never choose. Put something enormous above your sofa. Compare three different pieces. Discover that the one you were convinced would look perfect actually doesn’t, while something you clicked on out of curiosity suddenly does.
That is exactly what ARA is for.
2. Start with a room
There are two ways to begin.
You can choose a room from the Room Gallery and start experimenting immediately. This is the quickest option if you simply want to see how an artwork behaves in an interior, compare sizes or browse without uploading anything.
Or you can use a photograph of your own room.
Upload your photo and ARA turns it into your own little art playground. Your photo stays on your device: ARA does not receive or store it.
For the best result, use a photo that gives you a reasonably clear view of the wall where you might hang the artwork. It doesn’t have to look like an interior-design shoot. It just needs to show ARA where you want to play.
3. Choose Your Artwork
Now for the fun part.
Browse the artworks available in ARA and choose one to place in the room. You can switch between works whenever you like, so there is no need to narrow things down first.
If you came in with one particular artwork in mind, start there.
If you didn’t, even better. Click around. Have some fun!
4. Find The Right Size
Size can completely change the way an artwork feels in a room.
A smaller size can feel quiet and considered, while a larger version of exactly the same artwork can suddenly become the focal point of the entire space. Neither is automatically better. It depends on what you want the artwork to do.
ARA lets you switch between the sizes that are actually available for each artwork, so try more than one. Even if you think you already know which size you need, it can be surprisingly useful to see the alternatives.
And don’t be too sensible about it. Try the big one.
People often underestimate how much space an artwork can comfortably take up. And if it turns out to be ridiculous, excellent. Now you know.
5. Frames, Position and Perspective
Once you have an artwork on the wall, you can start making it belong there.
If different frame options are available, you can try them in ARA and see what they do to the work and the room around it. A frame that looks perfect in isolation may feel completely different next to your furniture, wall colour or other objects.
You can also move the artwork around freely. A little higher, slightly to the left, centred above the sofa, definitely notcentred above the sofa. This is your wall. There are no gallery guards.
And if your wall is photographed at an angle, ARA’s perspective controls let you adjust the artwork so it follows the room rather than floating awkwardly on top of the photograph.
The goal isn’t to create a perfect interior-design rendering. It is to give you a much better idea of how the artwork could actually feel in that space.
6. Make Your Own Room Accurate
If you upload your own room, ARA can do more than simply place an artwork on top of the photograph. You can give it a real-world measurement so it knows the scale of your room.
Choose something visible in the photo whose size you know, mark that distance in ARA and enter the actual measurement. A door, piece of furniture or another clearly visible object can work well.
ARA can then use that reference to display the artwork at a much more realistic size. You can zoom in while measuring too, which is particularly useful when your reference is small. Once the room has been measured, you can go back to playing with artworks and sizes without having to guess whether that 100 cm canvas really looks like 100 cm on your wall.
It takes a little more effort than simply uploading a photo, but if you are seriously comparing sizes, this is the bit worth doing properly.
7. Light and Foreground Objects
Real rooms have light, shadows and inconvenient things standing in front of walls. ARA takes those into account too.
You can adjust the light on each artwork separately, which is especially useful when you are comparing several works in the same room. The idea is not to alter the artwork itself, but to help it sit more naturally in the photograph you are using.
ARA can also recognise objects in front of the wall, such as plants, lamps and furniture, and place them in front of the artwork automatically.
It is a small thing that makes a surprisingly big difference. Instead of looking as though you have pasted a picture over your favourite monstera, the artwork actually appears to be hanging behind it.
8. Found One You Love?
At some point, all that experimenting may result in a very definite: Oh. THAT one.
If you are using ARA from my website, you can go directly from the artwork you have selected in ARA to that work in the shop. Your selected size and frame come with you, so you don’t have to find the same combination all over again.
You can check the details, take another look at the dimensions and, if you are ready, buy it.
Which was, admittedly, always one possible outcome of all this messing about.
9. So What If You’re Just Looking?!
ARA works just as well for comparing ideas as it does for making a purchase. Try different artworks, sizes and rooms, and save the combinations you want to come back to.
You can right-click an ARA image to save it to your device. Keep it for later, compare several versions or send it to someone else for a second opinion.
If you use a photo of your own room, it stays on your device while you work in ARA. It is not uploaded to or stored on another server.
Does that mean you can’t buy yet? That you have to check every artwork against every single wall in your home? Absolutely not!
Fall in love at first sight? Excellent. Buy it.
ARA is still there for the “hmm, let me see…” moments.
LET'S CHECK IT OUT!
