And the Winner is — Earth Tones!
I was doing some research that involved deconstructing top-selling art prints. The data was gathered from online retailers of art prints, and occasionally factored in customer comments (e.g., “the colors look great with my sofa”). The dimensions were completely subjective based on primitive design and art themes. The dimensions are treated as orthogonal for the sake of comparison, for example, a landscape black-and-white photograph of the ocean would contain three independent vectors: “landscape”, “black and white photograph”, and “ocean”.
For the sake of anecdotal simplicity, all correlating data was ignored (e.g., “horse” and “erotic female” never appeared together, but “basic geometry” and “abstract” seemed to have a significant positive covariance).
The theory is that these basic dimensions can be mapped back to cognitive heuristics and evolutionary biology factors that would influence human taste in artwork. The wholly subjective desire to see a painting hanging in your living room may have some objective merits based on evolved cognitive biases. In other words, there’s a reason you like the paintings that you like.
The data collected was fascinating. The percentages indicate the total percent of top-selling artwork that contained the dimension.
67 earth tones
56 color highlights (e.g., contrasting with earth tones)
46 rule of thirds
32 circles and squares
32 abstract *
29 home decor colors (i.e., customer comments that it matches their sofa)
17 flowers
17 landscape
11 tree
11 paint smears
8 silhouette of people
7 Van Gogh print
7 b&w photograph
4 Picasso print
4 monochrome photograph
4 beach/ocean
4 erotic female
4 city street
3 horse
3 river
3 heart
3 Italian villa
2 birds
2 turquoise paint smears
2 couple kissing
1 alcohol
1 cat
1 mountains
1 surfing
1 guitars
1 children
1 sunset
1 vintage flag
* “abstract” in this context refers to a work with no ostensible representation of a thing that can be described with a single noun in the English language. This is clearly a subjective judgment call and could very well differ from culture to culture.