I kinda like the first one. Of course, I also like to have really cheesy fantasy paintings and the desktop image on my computer. For, say, a kids room I think it's suitably mystical to work.

Yeah, I was thinking more about hallways, living room, etc. The first is definitely great for a kids room.

The reason I find this complex is that usually when you're doing somewhat of a throwback (like making a personal bookplate for your collection) it's easy to look like you're just engaging in an affectation, and the way I think to sidestep that is to be educated about the actual thing you're doing and then authentically do it well. Some things will never work (wearing spats), some things can, etc.

Maybe a lot of knowledge on these fronts is just transmitted through generations. One interesting thing that happens here is when the markers of sophistication become markers of parochiality (like a debutante ball), or even worse when they become markers of trashiness (like certain clothes, makeup etc.)

I have a secret fantasy of trying to paint something on the walls of my house. I liked your ceiling example. Here is a nytimes article about someone doing murals (and a bunch of other stuff) in his home. A picture. This is way overboard, of course.

I fully intend to add some appropriate murals and/or frescoes to my walls when I am no longer a renter, if that's any sort of data point! They're only trashy when they're trashy (like Kim Basinger riding a narwhal) - if tastefully done, wall art is fine. I love the viney frescoes as found in mosques, for eg.

Kim Basinger riding a narwhal

Oh my. How did you ever come up with that image?

I think my take on murals/frescos depends on what the mural/fresco is of. Divide them into decorative versus realistic, let's say. Decorative would be things that are patterned, and realistic would be scenes or depictions.

In a typical house, decorative frescos are OK, and realistic ones are not. I'm not sure I'm making sense.

The problem with realistic frescoes is the finality to the concept I think.

If there's a hanging picture of a woman looking at you, that's fine.

But when she's looking at you and she's painted into the goddamn wall it's different I think. You're closing the conceptual space of the room to the scenario depicted.

For example I'm sitting in a drawing room where there are all sorts of depictions--oil paintings, rugs meant to be hung, photograph stands on bookcases, some sort of very intricate stitching depicting a lounging aristocratic couple, a dagger in glass, etc. Now if you painted all these things onto the wall you'd have a mess, because there has to be some thematic consistency..

What I'm actually most sympathetic to is something between abstraction and realistic scenery; the kind of frescoes they painted in like the Renaissance where they can douse the whole ceiling and wall in it but it still recedes into the background because the figures are are firmly in their world of the fresco rather than yours. So religious or thematic rather than landscape or scenery.

When we bought our house, it came with a very 70's looking wallpaper (photographic) mural at the end of the hall. It's of a bunch of plants sitting in a white room that looks a lot like an extension of our hallway; we've considered ripping it down, but then we'll have a blank wall at the end of a 6-foot hallway. Design-wise, it always sucks to have people walking towards a dark space or a blank wall, so we've just left it. It's kind of a cool trompe l'oeil.

I tend to prefer natural art in these contexts (your home, for eg) - when you get it wrong you get it WRONG and unless you are a good painter it's there till you can afford to remove it. The picture linked by DarkForest is terrible, IMO, and I couldn't sleep there unless I owned it and had a plan for the redecoration (or went to a house party and got really trashed, possibly), which pretty much fits in with Stewriffic's decorative vs realistic division, in a broader sense. It probably depends most of all on what you find aesthetically pleasing - I tend to prefer natural patterns.

Kim Basinger riding a narwhal

Oh my. How did you ever come up with that image?

Not original, sadly - if I recall correctly it was an airbrushed painting of a mermaid Kim Basinger riding a narwhal, on the side of a dodgy white van, which I read in a Carl Hiaasen novel (maybe Lucky You), right about the time of the "NARWHALS! FUCK YEAH! THE UNICORNS OF THE SEEE-EEE-EEAA" meme doing the rounds (which is why the image stuck in my head, I'm sure). Still, it's an evocative example of bad artwork.