Choosing Wall Clocks

Like a piece of artwork, a wall clock for your home should be chosen carefully. With many of today’s beautiful clocks on the market they are probably best thought of as a functional piece of artwork. All wall clocks are not suited to all rooms so by following this room by room guide you can get the most suitable clock for your room.

The kitchen in a demanding environment for any type of electro-mechanical device, it is possibly even more demanding than the bathroom. A clock in the kitchen will need to operate in a hot, steamy and greasy environment and so you clock should be chosen carefully. If you like and do a lot of cooking a clock on the wall in the kitchen will probably be your most used clock for making sure that your roast comes together all at the right time. Bearing the previous point in mind you also need to position your clock in a location where it can be seen from anywhere in the kitchen. There are a lot of wall clocks on the market that have exposed hands, but for the kitchen I would recommend a clock that has a closed face i.e. the hands are behind glass. An enclosed wall clock will serve two purposes; one, the mechanism will not get too affected by climatic conditions and two, it is very easy to clean a glass faced clock. If you’ve tried cleaning greasy clock hands you’ll know why I’m recommending a closed face clock.

Searching for a clock for your lounge becomes even more difficult than a kitchen, not because of limited choices, the exact opposite there are too many choices. Unlike the kitchen the lounge is a more friendly place for a wall clock to live and so you can get whatever type of clock you want. Try to match the size of the clock you get to the size of the wall it is going on, you don’t necessarily have to match the size of the clock to the room, it is more the proportions of it on the wall that are more important. If you have a small room, but have one wall that is completely blank then a large wall clock on it will make an excellent feature. Large wall clocks don’t mean a massive casing either now, there are clocks that you literallyr make yourself. You get the hand and clock mechanism as a single component and mount this in the centre of your wall, the numerals are then stuck on the wall in the correct position. This type of clock makes a really striking feature in a contemportary room.

If your style is a little more reserved and your décor goes along the more traditional lines then there is equally as many options available to you. You may find some fantastic antique wall clocks in your local antiques centre, they don;’t all cost the earth either. If you fancied your self a project you could always buy yourself a clock that needed some renovation. I always find it more satisfying to have something in the home that you’ve put some time in to and not just bought off the shelf in nice new packaging where the only effort you put in was to open your wallet.

Like the kitchen the wall clock in the hall way will be one of the most used in the home, positon it where you can see it. The hallway is also one of the most important rooms of the house in terms of impressions. It is the first room that visitors to the house will see and so it sets the tone for the entire house. Choosing a clock for the hall is much the same process as choosing one for the living room – look at the space available and the style of your décor. Don’t go too ‘designer’ where you have to look at the clock and then figure out what time it’s saying, go for something that’s easy to read in a hurry.

 Choosing a clock for your dining room needs the same priniciples applied to it as the living room. A clock in a dining room is really there for aesthetic purposes so you can afford to go a little bit crazy and put a statement on the wall. If your dining room is more formal you would look to choose a clock that tied in better.

Perhaps the third most used clock in the house would live in your home office. You can afford to go for a more functional look in here. Stainless steel and glass is always a safe bet for a study, but there’s nothing stopping you going for a more contemporary ‘designer’ option. If you work with people around the world it may be worth getting multiple clocks and setting them to the same time as your business partners around the world. You could go for the safe option of a the same clock for every country your work with or go for a more fun option and try to match the clock to the country/ person you deal with! Having different clocks on a wall would make a nice feature. If you wanted to go really safe, you can get plaques with all of the clocks built in…. boring!

There are two types of people in this world, one that can sleep in a room with a ticking clock, and the other one that can’t. I fall into the latter, if I’m staying in a room with a ticking clock the batteries have to come out of it, for this reason I avoid wall clocks in the bedroom, in this case I go digital. Having said that though I find that wall clocks in a bedroom and something and there are silent clocks out there but they are not available in as many choices. If you are looking for a silent clock they are usually labelled as ‘silent sweep’ this means that the second hand sweeps around the face silently with know increments. As I mentioned your options are severely limited, so if you find one that matches the interior of your bedroom, I would snatch it up.

If you have a large bathroom and good extraction then you can probably get away with choosing any clock your want, but if you have a small bathroom your choices become very limited. The humidity in a small bathroom would quickly kill a standard wall clock so I would definitely advise looking for a clock that is water resistant or waterproof. Like silent wall clocks these are difficult to come across and so if you find a good one snap it up – all of the ‘good looking’ looking ones I’ve found online were sold out – so be quick.

If you’ve got this far through the article your obvious serious about getting a wall clock and I’d really recommend buying one on line. The amount of retailers online will give you far more choice that if you go to your local home store. If you can't find a suitable clock though you could also make your own like the guy below!