How to turn your TV into wall art…
One of my most popular comments on TikTok is something along the lines of “I love the painting above your fireplace!” or “where is the painting above your fireplace from?” and I absolutely love it. I knew when we built the feature wall in our living room that I wanted to turn our big black screen into something pretty. Because let’s face it, a TV is not pretty – but it’s also something we’re not willing to live without. There was also nowhere else it could possibly go in our home, we have an open plan downstairs so we’re limited on walls, and there was no way it was being placed on the statement alcove shelving.
I was very tempted to invest in the Samsung frame, but we already owned a regular Samsung TV and it seemed really silly to fork out around £1k on something we didn’t actually need. For this reason, we decided to DIY it and make our own frame instead – which actually ended up costing all of £10 (!!) for the wood that we used to make it with. If you’re interested in the process, then keep reading!
Mounting the TV
Jake built our entire feature wall from scratch, so that certainly helped with being able to create a recess to mount our TV into, to then be able to hang the frame over it. But there are lots of other possibilities to hang a frame over a TV without needing the recess. When building our false chimney breast, the area behind the TV bracket was reinforced with additional bracing, and the wall was boarded, filled and then painted.
Choosing a good quality tv bracket is a crucial step to hanging the TV on the wall. You basically want something that’s going to securely attach your TV, but hang it flat against the wall with no gaps or tilting. The TV bracket that we used, is a strong double arm type, like this one here. It allows the TV to be pulled out for installation and attaching cables, but it then pushes back flat against the wall. Our TV bracket was fastened to the wall with Toggle Fixings, these are fantastic for hanging heavy weight items to hollow walls.
Making the frame
When it comes to the frame, if you don’t fancy the task of making one yourself like we did, you could buy a pre-made frame, or buy a custom one made to size. If you do a quick google of ‘made to size picture frames’ you’ll find thousands of websites that offer this as a service. For ours, we bought some planed square edge pine from a local timber merchant and simply chamfered the edges and mitred the corners. They were then fixed together with a bit of wood glue and some L shaped brackets on the back. We finished it off with some medium brown Briwax that took the edge off the pale wood, but still looked lovely and natural. To hang the frame, we used keyhole hangers like these that allow us to hang the frame from a screw on either side of the tv. It’s also really easy to remove the frame any time we need access to it!
Turning it into artwork
You can pretty much use any TV for this, all you need to do is airplay an image to your TV, use the internet to display one, or upload an image in whatever format works for your TV. However, our TV is a 50″ Samsung AU8000 which was less than £400, and whilst it is not the Samsung Frame, it has loads of the same features. To add my artwork to the TV, I use the exact same app on my phone as the Samsung Frame uses and simply upload artwork I purchase through Etsy to the gallery in ambient mode on the app. I did a video on it on TikTok if the visuals help explain it a little easier.
And that’s how I make our TV look like artwork in lots of my photos/videos, I love the statement that it makes whilst still being super practical and allowing us to have a big TV on the living room wall. The best bit is easily changing up the art throughout the seasons, I love being able to upload anything I like!
