How to Style Your Walls Like a Nancy Meyers Movie
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Time to read: 9 min
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Time to read: 9 min
If you keep the latest decor trends on your radar like us, you would probably be in the know about the emphasis homeowners and designers are putting on cozy, warm spaces that are beautiful yet still help make us feel like ourselves. Key concepts like functional cocoon, maximalist biophilic interior design, artisan decor, and tactile surfaces all gravitate towards the idea of personalized spaces that are unrestrained by any one design movement and aspire towards what is natural and resonant.
Enter Nancy Meyers and her industry-defining set designs. Even if her name doesn’t ring a bell, her directorial oeuvre might—from The Parent Trap (1998) to The Holiday (2006) and The Intern (2015), a Meyers film will often not only be a favorite among comfort watchlists, but the inspiration of many a home decor Pinterest board, and before that, many a design community forum, and many a career in design.
It’s the perfect filmography to look to as we decidedly veer away this year from sterile palettes and staged layouts that look straight out of a magazine but don’t reflect our true style and daily comforts. In this article, we're going to do exactly that and organize the many ways to style your walls for an authentic space, with Nancy Meyers as our guide. Trust us, there’s going to be something for you to love in this compilation.
Grab your popcorn and get ready to press the screenshot buttons!
We gathered four Nancy Meyers films to reference in this article: The Parent Trap (1998), Something’s Gotta Give (2003), The Holiday (2006), and It’s Complicated (2009). We anatomized, hit pause, and wound them back to catch all the recurring motifs, easy-to-miss touches, and design features unique to each film, honing in on every set design’s vertical real estate.
More than anything, what defines a Nancy Meyers production design is warmth. Warmth, whether in terms of the visual or something more intangible, motivates every design choice and gently but thoroughly molds the overall atmosphere that the film immerses the viewer in. So how can your walls help you realize that warm, comforting home or workspace according to Nancy Meyers, or, as TikTok has come to call it, the Nancy Meyers aesthetic?
Artwork may be interior design’s go-to for wall decor, but once you pay attention to the walls in these movies, you’d be surprised by how much art they have. Seriously, even for us, it’s a lot!
To start, we always say you can never go wrong with a classic gallery wall, and Nancy Meyers agrees. Who can forget that gorgeous winding staircase gallery wall layout in The Parent Trap?
The best gallery walls are curated over time, never rushed. Above all, they’re personal and reflect your life and/or personality. In The Parent Trap, Natasha Richardson plays wedding gown designer Elizabeth James, so a few of the pieces in their foyer display and many of the ones in her bedroom are framed fashion sketches.
A prime area for a gallery wall that we don’t often go for is the bedroom, but characters in The Holiday and Something’s Gotta Give show us how to pull it off beautifully: arrange pictures in a small cluster either above the bed or on an adjoining wall anchored by a dresser or table.
You might notice these film gallery walls are displayed in matted frames, which is an elegant way of framing to add depth and distinction to each piece while also bringing them together as one unit. Keep our gallery wall guide handy to help you:
If gallery walls are for the bedroom in the NMCU (Nancy Meyers cinematic universe), then big statement pieces are for the living room. In The Parent Trap, It’s Complicated, Something’s Gotta Give, and The Holiday, you don’t go big or go home, you go big at home when welcoming guests. Here, you can take a leaf out of the same book and choose the grandest and/or largest artwork that speaks to you and guests will enjoy seeing during their visit.
Left to right: The Parent Trap (1998), It’s Complicated (2009), Something’s Gotta Give (2003), The Holiday (2006). Images courtesy of Walt Disney Productions, Universal Studios, and Columbia Pictures
We usually keep to safe spots when hanging our precious art, understandably so. But should wall art truly be limited to the bedroom, study, and living room? We don’t think so, and with the ubiquitous art in Nancy Meyers’ sets, it’s safe to say she's on the same page.
Left to right: It’s Complicated (2009), The Parent Trap (1998), The Holiday (2006). Images courtesy of Columbia Pictures, Walt Disney Productions, and Universal Studios
From the mantelpiece and the bathroom to the kitchen, doorways, and the gym, art is worth the risk. And not for the sake of putting something up on the wall, but for oneness. A cozy living area can extend that warmth to the kitchen with the help of a two-piece collection, like in Jane Adler’s (Meryl Streep) iconic open kitchen in It’s Complicated. Amanda Woods’ (Cameron Diaz) home gym in The Holiday is instantly fun and vibrant in the three seconds we get to see it, thanks to the large pair of artworks greeting us (which, by the way, matches her striking foyer showpiece downstairs). Although it never quite comes into focus, we also can’t help noticing the picture right above Lindsay Lohan’s bathtub in The Parent Trap, positioned just beyond eye level as an exception to the rule.
If you haven’t yet descended down that rabbit hole, there’s a whole world of “risky” picture hanging out there, and you can get a head start with our guide:
Remember, we don’t want to be restrained by rigid aesthetics. That’s not what the 2026 movement is all about, and that’s not how a Nancy Meyers protagonist would build their space either. Framed art is not the only thing that belongs on our walls—and for one, it doesn’t always have to be on our walls, either.
These film sets have their fair share of tabletop picture arrangements, and we love to see it. A tabletop setup is an excellent way to create contrast, not just in display style, but in subject matter too. If your walls mostly showcase fine art, you can dedicate an exclusive tabletop collection to family or travel photos and swap them out easily with every new life event. If you’re placing them on a dresser or entertainment center, you’ll also want to secure your furniture to keep your pictures extra safe, just in case.
Displaying pictures on tabletops isn’t the only way Nancy Meyers interiors play around with display styles; another way is to combine both hanging wall art and leaning tabletop picture frames—peep Iris’s (Kate Winslet) living room in The Holiday above as an example. Both of these methods are great alternatives for when you start running out of wall space, or if, like us, you have one of those days where just the thought of drilling already tires you out. (Trust us, we get it.) Just make sure you work on a level surface so your pictures don’t slide off and ruin the effect.
Get started on our guide to arranging the perfect tabletop picture display (Not exclusive to tables, by the way!):
Beyond hanging styles, these films offer fantastic inspo for diversifying the art and decor (think mixed media) we hang on our walls. We see DIY collages of wall clippings on corkboards, vintage clocks, beautiful decorative plates, and children’s art effortlessly integrated.
Left to right: The Parent Trap (1998), The Holiday (2006). Images courtesy of Walt Disney Productions and Universal Studios
How do you hang these items on the wall, though? Sometimes, the usual picture hook won’t quite work for non-art decor.
For quickly fastening prints and memos on cork, try brass push pins as a step up from wall tacks. Kids’ art in the kitchen is done in at least two of these films, and we particularly adore how Graham’s (Jude Law) kitchen in The Holiday merges his daughters’ colorful creations with a lovely plate collection—try a similar curation of your own using stretchable plate hangers. If you’re into wall clocks, like retro ones or antiques, we recommend a hanging kit that simplifies mounting on keyhole slots.
We can also think of a few creative ways to show off your kids’ art:
Blind spot decor, anyone?
We’ve talked about blind spots before, and we love how in the world of a Nancy Meyers film, there are basically no blind spots left undecorated. Even a small space is no excuse, as so delightfully exemplified by the homey and quaint English cottage Cameron Diaz substitutes for her LA mansion in The Holiday, making you think, “One really can’t have enough art when done right, huh?”
Although we’re aiming for comforting, well-decorated personal spaces by looking to these Meyers productions (all of them designed by Jon Hutman, save for The Parent Trap), great design in this case is the fruit of not only sincerity, but also strategy. What looks so effortless and timeless on screen is all thanks to a lot of effort and thought for each design choice behind the scenes. For instance, this shot of Meryl Streep’s bedroom dresser in It’s Complicated:
When we tell you we gasped upon seeing the wall art perfectly reflected in the mirror above the dresser, we’re not exaggerating. This is what we mean when we say mind where you hang your mirror—your space will be all the better for it. A well-placed mirror will visually air out a room, and as demonstrated in this example, add decorative interest beyond its practical function.
In a similar way that mirrors let you play with light, you’ll find that you may be underutilizing your lighting fixtures at home the way they’re not in Nancy Meyers interiors. From the kitchen and wine cellar in The Parent Trap and the English homes in The Holiday to the bakery-greengrocer-flower shop in It’s Complicated, you’ll find an abundance of wall sconces, and often right by them, wall art. The lights make the picture setups feel extra warm, and, in turn, the room itself.
Here are other lessons gleaned from the movies we’ve dissected in this piece:
Make an entire wall your own. Whether it’s a book nook with built-in bookcases or a high-tech wall oven, it’s the year of not hesitating to create a space that allows you to live a slower life and sit down with yourself whenever you need to.
Make it natural. Remember Iris’s tiny bathroom with the stone walls? We can imagine how satisfyingly warm a dip in the tub must feel on a winter night. Parker Knoll in The Parent Trap and the It’s Complicated house also show us the importance of greenery and natural materials in making a space relaxing. And you don’t have to live in California for that.
Accentuate by color. Production designer Jon Hutman talks on his YouTube channel about the power of color in bringing Nancy Meyers characters to life through the spaces they take up, from the periwinkle of Iris’s kitchen cabinets and the red-orange of Graham’s bookshelves to the brick orange wash of Elizabeth’s foyer and Erica’s dark wood flooring and furniture contrasting with her all-white French doors.
For decades, audiences have admired the lives and homes of characters in Nancy Meyers' works. But it’s easy to think that life imitates art when it’s the other way around, at least in the beginning—after all, many of these sets borrow something out of the director’s actual home and personal style.
So, what is the Nancy Meyers aesthetic?
The Nancy Meyers aesthetic endures because its end goal is to tell a compelling story. As Hutman says about designing It’s Complicated, “When you watch these movies today, you still want to know these people and live in these houses.”
In other words, it’s a storied aesthetic, “warm, detailed, believable.” The Meyers aesthetic is designing your home or workspace to tell your story. With this guide, you can eliminate some of the guesswork, so you have more time to build a self-referential space.
What are your thoughts about the Meyers aesthetic? Let’s discuss in the comments.
Happy hanging!
