Wall Decor

A deity on a wall is a different object from a deity on a shelf, and most people find that out after the hole is drilled. A shelf piece is lit from every side, can be picked up and turned, and moves house in a carton. A wall piece is fixed, seen from one angle, and lit by whatever happens to be in the room. That is why a frame that looked right in a photograph often looks flat once it is up. Nothing is falling across it.

So the first decision is not which deity. It is which wall, and whether any light reaches it.

Wall frame, wall plate, toran or latkan: which is which

Four words, used interchangeably online, for four different objects.

A wall frame is a deity image hung flat and looked at. Most of what sells as a god wall frame in India is a printed picture in a moulded frame, sometimes with a lenticular sheet over it, which is where the 3D effect in a 3D wall frame usually comes from. A murti frame, sometimes listed as a statue frame, is the other kind, where the face or the figure stands out of the frame rather than being printed onto it. The difference shows at close range: a print has one flat plane, while a raised face carries its own shadow, and the shadow moves as you cross the room.

A wall plate is a decorative disc, usually metal, hung alone or in a group of three. It is ornament rather than image.

A toran, or bandanwar, runs horizontally across the top of a doorway. It is a garland form. It belongs to the door rather than to the wall, and it tends to go up for a festival rather than stay up all year.

A latkan hangs vertically and ends in bells, at a doorway, a window, or beside a mandir. The bells are the point, since they sound as the door moves. One thing about the word: in Hindi it does double duty, and if you search latkan you will mostly be shown tassels for blouse sleeves, which is by a wide margin its commoner meaning.

Wall hanging is the loose umbrella term that covers all four, which is why a search for a god wall hanging will return a cast brass panel, a bell latkan and a macrame cord on the same page. It is worth deciding which of the four you actually want before comparing prices, because they are not comparable objects.

What height do you hang a god wall frame

Higher than a picture, and higher than most people put it.

For ordinary wall art the working rule is the centre of the piece at standing eye level, roughly 145 to 150 cm from the floor, and that rule is right for a hallway or a living room. For a piece you will actually stand in front of and fold your hands to, raise it: the face wants to sit at or a little above your own eye line. Looking down at a deity is the one placement most families do mind, and it costs nothing to avoid.

The other half of the measurement is what sits underneath. Hung over a console, a shoe rack or a low chest, the piece reads as part of that furniture, so measure up from the furniture rather than from the floor, and leave roughly a hand's width, 20 to 25 cm, of clear wall between the two. On a large bare wall, size is the thing people get wrong: below about ten inches a single frame looks stranded, and going up a size reads better than adding a second piece beside it.

Is it for the entrance, the living room or the mandir wall

These are three different briefs, and one piece rarely answers all three.

An entrance piece is seen for two seconds at a time, by people arriving, usually from across the room. It wants one clear face and strong contrast, and fine detail is largely wasted on it. If the door is external it also takes weather, and a plated finish beside a coastal or monsoon-facing doorway will not stay bright.

A mandir wall is the opposite. It is seen close, by one person, often in lamplight, and detail is the entire reason to buy. It is also the one place a wall piece earns its keep structurally: in a flat with no room for a mandir cabinet, a deity face at eye level above a small shelf does the same work in none of the floor space. What it will not do is take abhishek. Anything on a wall gets cleaned dry, and a plated piece would not survive water in any case.

A living room or a study is the easiest of the three, and it is where a Buddha panel or a Krishna face tends to end up, because it reads as art to people who are not looking for a shrine.

On direction, the vastu convention usually quoted is the north-east for a mandir, with the deity facing east or north. That is sincerely held and widely followed rather than something anyone can demonstrate, and on a wall you are generally constrained by where the furniture and the switchboards already sit. Where the two conflict, most people take the wall that is free and light it properly.

How a wall frame is fixed to the wall

By weight, and the weight is almost always more than the photograph suggests. A 12 inch framed piece of the kind we make runs a shade under a kilo.

On a masonry or concrete wall that is a single screw into a plastic wall plug, a 6 mm bit, and it will hold for years. On plasterboard or a hollow partition it is a toggle or a self-drive plasterboard anchor, and it is emphatically not a nail and not an adhesive hook. Adhesive hooks are the recurring mistake here, because they hold well for a fortnight and then let go in the first properly hot week. If you do not know which wall you have, push a drawing pin into it. If it sinks easily and comes out clean, it is plasterboard.

Solid brass panels are a weight class above that again and want a fixing rated for it. Whatever the wall, mark and drill with the piece held up in place first, because a deity frame that ends up two inches off centre above a shelf stays visible from the doorway for years.

What we make for a wall, and what we do not

Worth being straight, because there is more search demand on this page than there is stock behind it.

What is in stock at the moment is a framed Krishna face, twelve inches in a wooden frame with the face raised out of it, and a Buddha panel a little larger. Both suit a living room, a study or an entrance rather than a mandir. Everything else here is unavailable just now, including the whole brass latkan range, the Ganesh and Om Swastik and Shubh Labh and Lakshmi Ganesh designs with bells. They are made and they do come back. If a door hanging is what you came for, it is worth waiting rather than substituting, because nothing else we make does the same job at a threshold.

We do not make torans or bandanwars at all, and we do not make decorative wall plates or brass nameplates. If that is what you are after, this is not the right shop.

For Ganesha, Lakshmi and Balaji, the three deities most people arrive wanting on a wall, the honest answer today is a figure rather than a frame. See god idols and figurines for the full range, or Krishna murtis, where the frame sits alongside figures of the same deity.

Brass or plated, and how to clean each

Two constructions run through our wall pieces, and they are cleaned in opposite directions, so it is worth knowing which one you have before you reach for anything.

Solid brass is poured slowly into a mould made for that one piece, and the mould is broken open once the metal has cooled. Every casting gets its own mould, which is why the detail holds where a reusable sand mould softens it, and it is why the alloy has to be high grade, since a lesser brass will not fill the shape cleanly. Sand cast brass is a different and cheaper process, and on a flat wall panel the difference shows first in the shallow relief. Brass darkens with time, which is surface oxide rather than a fault, and lemon and salt or tamarind brings it back in about ten minutes. Dry it fully afterwards.

Plated pieces are built the other way round: a resin core, a layer of copper over it, then gold or silver electroplated on top. The copper is the layer that matters, because resin cannot be plated directly and the copper is what the precious metal keys onto. It is also why these pieces are light, which is a genuine advantage on a wall, why the detail stays crisp at a small size, and why water is the one thing to keep away from them. Dry cloth only, never an acidic paste.

Every piece is checked at our own warehouse before it goes out, and everything ships in our own packaging, which is made to be opened rather than merely to survive the journey.

A wall piece as a griha pravesh gift

It is a good housewarming gift for one unglamorous reason: a new flat has walls before it has furniture. Almost everything else you could give needs a surface, and surfaces are the last thing to arrive.

The caution is that it commits somebody to drilling a new wall, and people mind that more than you would expect, particularly in a rented place. Where you are not sure, a figure is the safer gift, because it can be moved and it can be put away. See housewarming and griha pravesh gifts for what usually goes, home decor for the wider range, or showpieces for a living room. Diwali is the seasonal peak for anything hung at a threshold, so see Diwali gifts around then. For volume, corporate gifts or the bulk order enquiry page.

One note on money. The wall decor searched for most in India sits under 500 rupees, and at that price it is a printed frame or a plastic moulding. What we make starts above that band and runs into the low thousands, which is the right money for something cast or plated rather than printed, and the wrong money if the job is to cover a large wall cheaply.