Can You Hang Original Art on a Covered Patio?

I get asked this more every year, and I understand exactly why. Our patios are not patios the way they are in other parts of the country. They are living rooms with better views, and we use them nine months out of twelve. Of course you want them to feel finished.

So here is the honest answer. I would not hang an original painting on an open covered patio here, even a well shaded one. But before you close the tab, there is a good way to do this, and it is not a consolation prize.

What is actually happening out there

A covered patio still gets bounced light all day long, and bounced light off a pool deck or light stucco is far stronger than most people imagine. It also gets the full temperature swing, which in a Phoenix summer means a wall that is over 100 degrees in the afternoon and comfortable by midnight.

That daily expansion and contraction is harder on a canvas than the heat by itself. Add monsoon humidity in July and August, then bone dry air by October, and you have asked a stretched canvas to move all year long.

Then there is the dust, and the birds

I am only half joking. Blowing dust settles into a textured surface and does not come out easily. Sprinklers throw mineral spotting. Nesting birds are a genuine hazard, and so is a monsoon that comes in sideways at two in the morning when nobody is home to bring anything inside.

What I would do instead

If the patio is fully enclosed, air conditioned, and glassed in, then it is a room and we can treat it like one. Plenty of homes here have exactly that, and original work does beautifully in them.

If it is open air, I would put the original on the wall you see through the glass from the patio instead. It is a lovely trick and it works. You sit outside, the piece anchors the view back into the house, and it never takes a single day of weather. The room and the patio start reading as one space, which is what you wanted anyway.

For the patio wall itself, this is where a durable outdoor specific piece belongs, or something sculptural in metal or stone that is built for the conditions. I would rather tell you that plainly than sell you something that will not last.

If you want the outside brought in

There is another way to get that feeling. Work that carries the desert in it does something to an interior wall that a view alone does not. The Sedona Earth pieces hold real ground from Sedona in the surface, so the place is physically in the room rather than pictured on the wall.

If you have a patio and an adjoining room you are trying to make feel like one space, I would love to hear about it. A commission starts with a conversation about how you actually live in the room, and this is exactly the kind of problem worth solving on purpose.

Warmly,

Dani