Simple but smart ways to customise your 3D virtual gallery

One of the joys of a virtual gallery is the way every surface can be tinted, brightened or darkened with a simple click. It’s a lot easier than buying tins of paint and spending the day up a ladder transforming a bricks-and-mortar space. That said, there are some tips to keep in mind when choosing colour schemes for an online space.

How do you ensure the setting supports your exhibition rather than overwhelming the art works? Here are some suggestions.

Feature walls can be useful

A single wall can be coloured to set-off a hero artwork, or the entire gallery can be subtly tinted to support the hue or colours of the artworks, their frames and mattes. There are infinite possibilities for customising the look of your gallery space.

But don’t just focus on the walls

Think about how you can create a mood using all the aspects of your virtual gallery – the walls, doors, windows, lighting rig and even the bench seats. Being able to subtly re-colour these surfaces gives curators the ability to present the exhibition just how they envisage.

Start with one uniform colour and add some variations

It’s easy to get bogged down with over-complication if you look at all the surfaces one after the other, and try to resolve the design sequentially.

Here’s a better way. Start with a uniform colour throughout the gallery and then adjust some of the elements.

The images above show the gallery initially uncoloured, then with the same colour applied to all surfaces. In the third image the ceiling and floor have been lightened a little and in the final image the feature wall has been made darker.

Your Exhibbit gallery is set to a default white initially. To make a change throughout the entire gallery, all the walls and ceilings can be coloured collectively. This can be a good way to begin. 

From here, you can start to adjust the hue, saturation and brightness of surfaces and individual walls, until you have achieved a harmonious balance.

Beware of the dark

There’s nothing wrong with rich, dark surfaces, especially if you want to break away from the white cube look.  However, it’s a good idea to be careful when selecting really dark tones.

Although Exhibbit lets you colour most surfaces until they’re almost black, beware of making them so dark that you can’t see the shadows rendered into them – particularly the walls. This can ruin the realism of the gallery.

The art is always the hero

Exhibbit has been designed with a palette of design options that let you render almost any gallery environment – from traditional to post-modern. As gallerists and artists ourselves, we wanted to give curators a way to showcase their art to the best possible effect.

Exhibbit comes with user-friendly tools that control light, shade, tints, frames and all the accessories that help viewers feel they’re in a real gallery. 

We provide the palette – you set the stage, and create the occasion.