Every interior designer I know has a love hate relationship with TV’s. It’s because they can easily take over a room, creating a massive “black hole” of nothingness. But people love their big screens so they have to be dealt with. That’s why 10 years ago I started looking for ways to incorporate TV’s into design including using the TV as art.
Using a TV as art just means that you work with it rather than trying to hide it. On of my favorite ways to do that is to create a gallery wall with the TV as the largest piece. Even better if you display art on the TV screen!
The consumerism gods will have you believe that you need a fancy new TV to do this. You do not. All you need is a smart TV or TV with a smart device/console (i.e. Roku, Fire Stick, Xbox, etc.) and cloud based photo storage, which most of us all have in 2023. Even if you don’t, most TVs already have some sort of screensaver functionality similar to your laptop or PC.
This post is to show you how I use my non-smart TV to display whatever I want. We use fire sticks here at the 4th House so this how-to is specific to that device & the Amazon Photos app. And you don’t need Amazon Prime to do this.
Setup Steps To Use Your TV As Art
First thing you need to do is download the Amazon Photos app for android (or from the apple app store) & upload a photo using the steps outlined here. It can be whatever you want – I’ve used a family photo but you could also upload a photo of your favorite art piece or even multiple photos to display in a slideshow.
Watch this video to see how to set your screensaver to use your TV as art or read the steps below the video.
Then head to your TV & go to the settings on your smart device. Within settings, you will navigate to Display & Sounds –> Screensaver.
Then choose the location you want to show photos from (i.e. Family Vault, Daily Memories, Recent Photos, etc.). Set your screen timeout & wait to see your photo(s) on screen.
Once the TV has been idle for whatever start time you set, you will see your photo as the screensaver. If you only chose 1 photo, it will be static… like art!
This is what a static image will look like.
And there you have it – an easy {almost} free way to use your current TV as art!
