Gallery walls are one of the most unique ways to add personality to your home. Each gallery wall is completely unique and it really shows the style and lifestyle of the homeowners. Make your own following our simple and awesome tips and add some life and inspiration to your home too!
Creativity is piercing the mundane to find the marvelous. -Bill Moyers
Make It Personal
Gallery walls are usually a reflection of the person and of the family. Before starting to design it, think of what represents you - think of individual items and pieces that connect with you and your family. Pictures, artwork, paintings, a monogram of your last name, a family heirloom, or even a DIY project that you’ve made can be great additions to the gallery.
The Formal Display
Let’s start with the most traditional setting. For those who prefer a simple look that overflows with elegance and that can easily fit any decór style, you can go for uniform frames with the same sizes, making sets of 6, 8, 9 or more frames that together form a beautiful and symmetrical gallery wall.
Mix Frames
Mixing different frames and different styles can create a very interesting gallery wall. Just remember to match the frame to the art: a gold, antique frame would go great with a painting, but maybe not so much for a modern, graphic poster.
Mix Sizes
Mix up different sized frames and posters to create an interesting composition that best suits your style.
Mix Materials
If you’re more extrovert and upbeat, mixing different materials and collected pieces is a great way to show off your personality. You can mix and match a lot of different and uncommon objects to your prints and photos, such as:
- Mirrors
- Wooden letters
- Clocks
- Signs
- Clothing items (such as a hat or necklace)
- Dried flowers
- Geometric mobile
- Vinyl discs
- Stickers
- Etc.
Get creative and see what will look best on your wall.
Printables
Printables are the perfect combination of style, inspiration, and beauty that decorate your home with personality. And the best part is: they’re free! We have our own beautifully designed printables that you can choose from and print them out with your own home printer. You can also take the files to a local print shop to make them in bigger sizes to best fit your gallery wall!
Alternative Paths
If you don’t want to hang each piece on the wall (and if you want to avoid drill holes), there are always alternate ways to create a gorgeous gallery wall. You can use shelves for a creative solution to hold your frames which looks incredibly beautiful! Don’t have shelves or you just don’t like frames? No problem! You can always use washi tape to secure prints and photos in place. It’s great for renters: it’s incredibly easy to rearrange the pieces and whenever you need, you can take down the gallery wall just by taking off the tape!
Creating a Cohesive Wall
To create an interesting gallery wall, you need to make the pieces speak to each other. Some uniformity among the art is greatly recommended so that your eyes and brain can detect a pattern and the mix doesn’t become overwhelming. If you use different frames, keep everything in a particular color palette. If all the art is graphic and colorful, try to use uniform frames in repeating sizes. You can also follow a theme or style, such as rustic or black and white prints, for example. Even if you’re going for an eclectic look, find a way to make your art pieces connect to make a successful gallery.
The Place
Any wall you have can create an interesting gallery wall. I mean it: it can be behind the TV, by the staircase, near a window, etc. Any little piece of bare wall can be transformed into a stunning gallery wall.
The Layout
Depending on where you are building your gallery wall, there are many different ways to arrange your frames and artwork. If it’s on a big wall, usually there’s the anchor piece, which is a large piece considered to be the focal point, with other smaller pieces surrounding it.
You can arrange the frames so they form a shape, such as a big square, rectangle, or roughly a round shape, but you can also get creative and try organic shapes, such as the ones in the image above. Just make sure you maintain a weight balance left to right and top to bottom, so the collection stays balanced.
Once your art is framed and you have all your pieces together, arrange them on the floor to see how much space they take up when grouped together and see which layout you like best.
Hanging Help
After you have a rough idea of what layout you want, there’s a neat trick that you can do before hanging the pieces. To see and decide what will be the height of the pieces and to see if the composition works well on your wall, you can make paper templates of the pieces and hang them on the wall using tape. This way, you can rearrange the pieces if necessary and check out how the layout is going to come out, before making any holes.
Try to incorporate only photos, prints, and artwork that you love, so in the end you’ll have a meaningful gallery that overflows with your style and personality. Show us your own gallery wall through our Facebook page and tell us your opinions in the comments below!
