Hang your records, not your posters
Album covers are the best square art you already own. Put the ones you love on the wall and swap them like a gallery.
PN
Priya Nair
Contributing writer
Filed under
Home
Plants, mugs, walls and moving day. How to make a rented room feel like yours.
The short version
1
Album covers are square art you already own.
2
Narrow ledges let you swap them in seconds.
3
Change the wall when you change what you’re playing.
Somewhere in your home there is probably a stack of records, or a box of them, or a shelf where the spines are all you ever see. Album covers are some of the best graphic design of the last seventy years, printed at a generous thirty centimetres square. Most of the time they live in the dark.
A few years ago I put three simple ledges on my living-room wall and started displaying records instead of posters. It is the best thing I have done for that room, and it cost less than one framed print.
A poster is decided once. A wall of records changes every time you play one.
How to do it
Use narrow picture ledges, not frames, so records slide in and out in seconds.
Leave space for one record to be the ‘now playing’ spot, next to the turntable.
Mix eras and colours. The wall looks best when it looks like a conversation.
Keep valuable records out of direct sunlight, which fades covers fast.
A gallery that moves
The joy of a record wall is that it is never finished. When I play something, it goes on the ledge. When friends come over, they pick one from the shelf and it goes up. The wall has become a record of the last few weeks of my life, in a way no poster ever could.
It also starts conversations. People who would never ask about your art will ask about a record cover. Half the albums I love most were recommended by guests who spotted something on the wall and said, have you heard their next one?
From the camera roll
Spines on the shelf, covers on the wall
The stack waiting its turn
Now playing, now hanging
“A poster is decided once. A wall of records changes every time you play one.”
— Priya Nair
Reader mail
Letters about this post.
“Swapped my posters for three records. The room feels like mine.”
“Changing the wall each month is a house ritual now.”
“My partner judges me by what’s on the ledge. Fair.”
PN
Written by
Priya Nair
Priya times things for fun: start-up screens, kettles, queues. She writes about slow technology and the joy of single-purpose objects.
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