Classic furniture, paint and woodwork create a framework for design, but the home decorations you hang on your wall give your design personality. The walls of your home are a blank canvas. The way that you fill them can define your style and personalize rooms that feel more like a stage set than your home. If you've never thought of hanging anything on your walls beyond a framed picture and a clock, you're selling your decorating short. Wall art comes in many themes and styles.

Purely Decorative

Paintings, prints and posters are purely decorative, and their only purpose is to pretty up your space. Consider samplers and embroidered signs in a country-style kitchen, a Happy Home plaque on your living room wall and a Welcome sign just inside the front door to make your guests feel that they've come home. Rustic wooden signs and plaques can set the tone for a country primitive kitchen or help your bathroom decor fit your design sensibility.

Shelves

Shelves serve two purposes-they're decorative touches that are also useful. Sculpted and carved shelves help bring country style to life while giving you room to display treasured figurines and knick-knacks. In the kitchen, a shelf with hooks can hold a collection of cookbooks and give you a place to hang your apron near at hand. A decorative spice shelf in the same wood as your kitchen table can help bring your kitchen design together, while a traditional white letter organizer with key hooks by the front door helps you keep everything together neatly while adding a decorative touch to your walls.

Blankets and Throws

An embroidered blanket, crocheted throw or woven fleece blanket can make a dramatic statement when you hang it on the wall. It's an excellent choice if you have a large, high wall where smaller pieces of art would get swallowed up by the space, or if the wall is small enough that the throw covers it completely, substituting for a wall mural. Choose blankets that have a dominant color or pattern, such as a Southwestern print blanket, or one with a picture that fits your decor. Blankets with pictures of kittens, flowers or sports figures are a great way to fill up space on a child's or teen's bedroom wall, and they offer the added advantage of helping insulate both from cold and noise.

Photo Frames

Nothing makes a room as cozy as family pictures on the wall. Photo frames help protect your precious memories from damage while accenting them and complementing the subject and colors in the photos. There are literally thousands of styles of photo frames, which opens up unlimited possibilities for arranging photos and frames on your walls. Tradition dictates that 8x10 frames and larger are suitable for wall hanging-but that tradition fell by the wayside long ago. Choose the pictures you love without regard to size and then find the frames that display them best. Your choices include collage frames, which hold many photos, as well as groupings of frames hung on ribbons so that you can hang several photos in a row. Don't forget that shelves provide even more space for displaying your photos in standing frames.

When you're choosing home decorations, take a step outside tradition and consider unusual and non-traditional wall decor and wall art that shows off your personal style.