Something can look perfectly proportionate on a tabletop and yet end up feeling oddly tiny or excessively weighty when hung up in situ. The scale of an object in the home is determined not only by its dimensions, but also by its proximity to other objects and furniture, as well as the amount of negative space surrounding it, the height at which it hangs, and how far away a person usually observes it.
Before you start cutting strips of material, cords, cardstock, or even a backing board, think about how and where the wall decor will hang. You need a very different shape on the narrow wall next to the door, for example, than you do on the area above a sofa, shelf, desk, or bed. Cut a piece of paper in the shape you are considering, tape it to the wall, and then back away from it. If you cannot see the paper, you may need to broaden the piece or make it more solid in shape. If the basic shape already looks like too much on the wall, it will almost certainly look too big once it gets texture (color, knots, dried flowers, layering) applied to it.
To find out whether a piece might be too large or small, make a rough paper template to the size you have in mind, tape it to the wall and see how it looks from the normal observation distance in the space. Don’t judge it just from where you could reach it with your arm extended, or you will miss how it looks when viewed in the space. Make sure that you aren’t hanging it too high on the wall, too low, too close to a corner, or too close to an adjacent piece of furniture. Taking this step is an easy way to avoid wasting time, only to come back to the panel when it is almost finished and realizing it is out of scale to the room.
Newcomers often create wall decor that ends up being bigger than the area can accommodate because the materials look appealing while you are close to them. A woven texture, for example, may seem fine while sitting on the tabletop, while the wood ring or macramé knot or the dried grasses may appear smaller than you might expect, but once it’s hung on the wall, it can become much more imposing. Textures will add to the bulk of an object even though the dimensions remain the same; you will find that you need more empty space around a piece that is made with thick cord than you do around a simple paper design.
It can also be difficult to know how small something is on the tabletop. If you feel a wall accent has become too small for the space, it won’t necessarily be made any better by adding more texture to it (more glue lines, beads, layers, colors, and so on), because it can still look out of scale no matter how busy it gets. At this point, it might be best to make the wall accent a bit larger (more background area or a wider dowel) to balance with the space or hang two related pieces or hang a new piece on a smaller wall. The point is, you don’t necessarily have to have a wall accent or decor that fills every last corner. You do want the decor to relate to its setting.
The lighting in your room affects its visual scale; it is quite possible that a paper or fabric shape in light colors would disappear on the wall, while a dark cord shape will seem very big. Matte paper, glossy paint, woven texture, and dried flowers can respond differently to light coming from either a window or a lamp; therefore, see how a piece of wall decor (or its paper template) looks while you are in that lighting. A hallway accent probably needs a clearer contrast in color or texture than a bright wall space where you read.
If you’re not sure whether a wall accent is the proper size, hang a piece of paper template in place and determine where you will place it, so you have an idea of where to hang the weight before you finish the wall decor. You need to know whether the bottom area of the accent, a protrusion of the shape on the sides, or even a loose cord will run into any furniture or people in the room. Take one more step back and look at how things hang on the wall, paying attention to just one thing; is the wall decor visible and easy to find when standing in the room, without making it hard to focus on anything else? If all the elements of a space, the wall decor, the empty spaces, and the rest of the furniture in the room, are seen at the same time and comfortably from one vantage point, you have done everything correctly.