apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

love the look of the quote bisecting the wall. I'm really getting into drawing on the wall, my latest http://a859.ac-images.myspacecdn.com/images01/26/m_964c6b313c33744233ef60e4b77b3c3a.jpg
hope the link works

why do you hate your parents?

I personally dislike the words-on-the-wall trend. It seems sort of more like a retail decoration than something I'd want to read every day. Inspirational sayings can seem a bit hackneyed after the 400th reading...

I thought about using word graphics on my walls, but it's hard for me to imagine it in a residential space. It's hard to pick out words, too. I have considered rescuing a discarded dictionary and using its pages as wallpaper, though.

My husband wants to put this quote on our kitchen wall "Very stupid to kill the servants. Now we don't even know where to find the marmalade." It's a line from an Agatha Christie movie.

on my kitchen walls someday:

"My doctor told me to stop having intimate dinners for four. Unless there are three other people." -- Orson Welles

www.wonderfulgraffitti.com has a great design tool to help you see what words will look like in a room. Customer service was also very helpful in giving me feedback and tinkering with my design. I ended up with "Bienvenue" in what they call their Cezanne script with a scroll underneath on the wall in my foyer, and I've been very happy with it.

This topic--wall sayings--came up on another forum today, and being environmentally responsible & all, I'm just gonna recycle my answer from over there...

I know William Morris & FLW were big fans of inspirational quotes on the walls, but that's not anyways near enough historical precedent for me to be wanting to see the same cliche every time I look up from making a piece of toast.

But if I were forced to add a big wall saying to one of my rooms, I would chisel into the plaster above the door into my dining room this Latin quote from Dante's Divine Comedy:

LASCIATE OGNI ESPERANZA VOI CH'ENTRATE
Abandon all hope, ye who enter here

To me, the words look self conscious. Like pithy lines the designer at the Gap would think up for their stores to inspire people to buy. We're so inundated with words everywhere we look outside our homes, I don't think I'd ever want to put even more up inside my house. The marmalade joke is pretty funny, though.

In my opinion, painting, hanging, drawing, words and phrases on the walls of a residence is similar to hanging corporate inspirational posters on the walls, initially interesting then eventually meaningless and pretentious. Foreign phrases on the walls can seem elitist, especially to English-only speaking visitors. Am I required to be joyful upon focusing my attention on the wall marked "Joy!" It would seem to me that creating a space whose environment evokes joy is far more effective.

yeaaaaah, i cant get behind the words-on-walls thing. sure, frame a print that uses text, but i just think painting words on walls is something that should be reserved for elementary schools. i once lived with someone who stenciled "wherever you go, there you are" in her bedroom, and i found it to be the most annoying bit of decor i'd ever seen.

It's funny, I walked by the Gap at lunch, and the window display people were putting up that pithy saying of Andy Warhol's about 15 minutes of fame on the wall in the window! I wonder what he would think of that?

It says Toy!

One doesn't do these things for others, one does them for oneself.

My vintage Cape Cod has lovely arched doorways. Above one of them I put the phrase "Petit Boite de Bijou" (I think that's correct--if someone with better French than mine can give a better translation of "Little jewel box" I won't mind). I don't look at it constantly but now and then it catches my eye and makes me smile.

I've always wanted to paint "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" (T.S. Eliot) on my walls. Since the poem is over 1,000 words long, this might have to stay a dream.

For me, the idea of poetry on my walls is akin to a painting or a photograph. Why should words be any different than drawings?

Personally I like writing on walls, as long as the writing is personal, and meaningful. I wouldn't like something generic and annoyingly inspirational.

What's TOY! mean anyway???