CUSTOMER VOICES “ I Didn’t Know I Needed Original Art Until I Had It ”

24 hours ago
8 min read

Updated: 1 hour ago

A conversation about walls, homes, and the painting that changed everything

Some of the best conversations about art happen not in galleries, not at openings, not between people with opinions about critical theory — but in living rooms, between people who simply found something that moved them and are still not quite sure how to explain why. We sat down with three Mickart Home customers to talk about their walls, what was wrong with them before, and what changed when they found their first piece of original hand-painted wall art. What followed was one of the most honest conversations we have had about what homes are actually for.

INTERVIEW ONE - Sophie

"For three years, I had a print I'd stopped seeing."

Sophie

34 · Brand Consultant · Victorian Conversion Flat · Edinburgh

Mickart Home: Sophie, let's start with the before. What was on your walls when you moved into the flat?

The usual, really. A couple of prints I'd bought at a market years ago, a framed poster from a trip to Barcelona, a mirror. Nothing I'd actually chosen if I'm honest. More just things I'd accumulated over time that seemed like they belonged on walls. I'd put them up and then I just... stopped seeing them completely [laughs]. They were just there. Background noise, kind of thing.

Mickart Home: When did you first feel like something was missing?

I'd been in the flat about eighteen months and I was hosting a dinner party. I'd put a lot of effort into the food, the table, the lighting. And at one point I just stepped back and looked at the room and thought... the walls are letting everything else down. Not dramatically or anything. But they were doing nothing. They had no presence. The room still felt like it was waiting to be finished, if that makes sense.

Mickart Home: You knew something was missing. But did you know what you were looking for? What did that search process look like for you?

I remember searching that week, Hand-painted wall art UK. Large abstract canvas Edinburgh. Original art for home UK, etc... Just going through everything I could find. I was looking for something that felt like a real decision, you know? Not just another placeholder I'd stop seeing in a month.

Mickart Home: What made you choose Mickart Home over everything else you found?

Honestly? The fact that nothing was a print. I'd spent two years buying things I thought were art, and every single one of them was just a print reproduction. The same cheap image on a thousand different walls. Mickart Home was the first place I came across where everything was actually hand-painted by a real person. That felt completely different to me. Like, fundamentally different. I ended up reading the whole website before I even thought about buying anything.

Mickart Home: Walk me through the piece you chose.

It's from the Gold & Metallic collection. A large canvas, golds and deep ambers, with this extraordinary textured surface that catches the light differently at different times of day. My flat faces west so in the late afternoon the light just comes in and the painting absolutely glows. I'd never had anything on my wall that actually responded to the time of day before. It sounds strange to say that but it's genuinely the first thing I notice when I walk in.

Mickart Home: How did the Mickart Home consultation feel?

Completely different from anything I'd expected, honestly. The coordinator asked me which direction the flat faced before he even asked anything about style. He was thinking about light from the start. He wanted to know what the room was actually used for, not what it looked like but what happened in it. And I found myself describing the flat in a way I never really had before. He suggested going larger than my first instinct as well. I'd been thinking 90 centimetres wide, something like that. And he just said the wall called for at least 120, probably 130. And he was completely right.

Mickart Home: What happened when it arrived?

I hung it, stood back, and immediately rang my mum. I just needed to tell someone. The room looked like it had been waiting for that exact thing. Not decorated. Arrived. That's the only word I have for it really. For about a week afterwards, every time I came home I'd walk in and just stop in the doorway. Not consciously or anything. I'd just stop. Because the room had become something worth actually walking into

Mickart Home: Would you buy original hand-painted art again?

I already have actually. I have a second piece now, from the Serene & Soothing collection, in my bedroom. And I tell everyone who visits where it came from. Three of my friends have ordered from Mickart Home since then [laughs].

Once you've had a real painting on your wall you just cannot go back [laughs] You really can't. That's just the truth of it.

INTERVIEW TWO - Marcus

"As an architect, I was embarrassed it took me this long."

Marcus

48 · Architect · New-Build Home · Surrey

Mickart Home: Marcus, you design spaces for a living. How did your own walls end up neglected?

The cobbler's children have no shoes [laughs]. I spend all day thinking about how space makes people feel and then I come home and walk past a blank wall I've been meaning to address for two years. I kept telling myself I was waiting until the space had settled before I committed to anything on the walls. Which is a very architect way of procrastinating.

Mickart Home: What were you actually looking for when you started searching?

Something that felt considered. Something that had been made with the same intentionality I try to bring to the spaces I design. I wanted original wall art. Every time I found a print I liked, I'd look it up and find it in twelve colourways on fourteen different sites. I must have typed original hand-painted canvas UK, bespoke wall art UK, large hand-painted abstract art about fifty times before I found Mickart Home.

Mickart Home: What was the consultation like, from a professional perspective?

I was impressed. The Mickart Home team asked questions I ask my own clients — not just what do you want it to look like, but what do you want it to feel like. What does the room need to do. Who uses it and when and how. That's the right starting point. Most people selling art skip all of that and just show you things. Mickart Home starts with the room, which is the correct approach. I have high ceilings — 3.2 metres — in my main living space. The coordinator suggested a piece from the New Arrivals, I had not seen anywhere else. He was thinking about proportion in exactly the way I would have. Pleasing ratios. The right relationship between the artwork and the architecture.

Mickart Home: Describe the piece you ended up with.

It's from the Black & White abstract collection. High contrast, strong composition, a surface with real textural depth. In a room with a lot of material interest already, concrete floors, exposed steel detail, oak joinery, adding colour would have competed. The monochrome hand-painted canvas creates visual resolution without noise. It's the loudest quiet thing in the room. Really.

Mickart Home: Has it changed how you think about the spaces you design for clients?

Yes, and I'm not ashamed to say it. I now recommend Mickart Home to residential clients as a matter of course. I tell them that the last ten percent of a space... the thing... that makes it feel finished rather than just complete, often comes down to one piece of original wall art on the right wall. I've seen it happen enough times now.

Mickart Home: Any advice for someone who has been putting it off the way you did?

Just book the consultation. Don't spend two more years looking at prints and feeling vaguely unsatisfied. The Mickart Home consultation is free, just e-mail them, and you come out of it knowing exactly what you need and why. That's more than I managed in two years of searching on my own.

INTERVIEW THREE - Dani

"I thought original art wasn't for someone my age. I was completely wrong."

Dani

29 · Graphic Designer · One-Bedroom Flat · Shoreditch, East London

Mickart Home: Dani, what was your assumption about buying original art before you found Mickart Home?

That it was for people older than me, with more money, who already knew what they were doing. I'm 29, I'm in a rental, technically, but I've been here four years and it's mine in every sense that matters, and I just thought buying original hand-painted art was something you did when you were properly settled. Like it was a reward for having figured everything out [laughs].

That's nonsense, obviously. But it took me a while to work that out.

Mickart Home: What changed your mind?

I went to a friend's birthday dinner and her flat had a painting on the wall that stopped me in my tracks. This warm... Something about the way the candlelight was hitting it. I don't know, it just had this warmth to it. I couldn't stop looking at it.

I literally stood next to it for twenty minutes during a dinner party [laughs]. Literally, really![laughs] I had to know where it came from. So I asked, naturally. She said Mickart Home... ["And I really liked the name, so cool" - Dani energetically adds] And... She said: it's hand-painted... totally original. I was on the website before I left her flat.

Mickart Home: What did you search for initially?

Affordable original wall art UK. Hand-painted canvas art for small flat. Abstract wall art Shoreditch. Original art under £300. I was convinced it would be out of reach. And then I found Mickart Home and looked at what was actually possible, and realised I had been completely wrong about what original art costs. A good print starts to feel dated. A real hand-painted original just keeps being right.

Mickart Home: Tell me about your consultation.

I was nervous writing that first email [laughs], I felt like I didn't know enough to even ask the right questions. But the Mickart Home coordinator made me feel like knowing what I felt was enough. He didn't ask me about art history. He asked me what colours made me feel at home. Whether I spent mornings or evenings in the main room, because that affects the light and the light affects what the painting does. I described the flat over email — small, quite dark, north-facing, and he went straight to the Earth & Warm Neutrals and Gold & Metallic collections. He said warm ochres and golds do more for a north-facing room than any number of warm-white paint choices. He was right.

Mickart Home: What size did you go with?

Larger than I thought I could manage in a small flat. That was his advice, in a small space, a single large abstract canvas is almost always better than several smaller pieces, because it gives the room a centre of gravity without cluttering it. I have one Mickart Home piece on the main wall and it makes the flat feel like it has a heartbeat.

Mickart Home: What would you say to other people your age who think original art isn't for them?

Go to the Mickart Home website right now [laughs]. Look at the collections. Book the consultation. Nobody is going to make you feel like you don't know enough or you're not the right kind of person. They're going to ask you about your room and your light and your life, and they're going to help you find the thing that belongs on your wall. I spent years putting prints up and taking them down because nothing ever quite felt right. I have owned one Mickart Home original for eighteen months and it has not moved once. That is the whole difference.