Gallery walls can add a personal touch to any home. Whether it’s treasured family photographs or an eclectic art collection, it’s a beautiful way to fill a wall, embrace your creativity and bring personality, scale and interest to a living space. It will be something unique which can bring you joy for many years to come! People often can feel overwhelmed and don’t know where to start, so here are a few tips to get you on your way.

Layout

It’s always helpful to put the time in working out your arrangement by using the floor to act as your wall. You can then lay out all of your artwork/pictures on the floor and play around with the composition/orientations until you find a look that you are happy with. Consider whether you wish to have neat rows or more of an organic arrangement and if there’s anything you’d like to swap in or replace before finalising your layout and starting to put nails in the wall! If you already have frames for your artwork, then I find taking out the paper from the back of each frame and playing around with the layouts makes it so much easier to visualise the finished result (if you don’t have the paper then you can always use newspaper cut to size).

Measure Up!

The amount of space you have will play an important role in choosing the best pieces for your walls. For example, the way in which you approach living room feature walls will be different to when creating stairway wall décor ideas.

A universal rule is to place the centre of your gallery wall approximately 145cm above the floor. Feel free to experiment with this rule, if you have a high ceiling it may have to be adjusted slightly. If hanging above a sofa, you will have to take the edge of the sofa into account and the lowest hanging frame should hang at least 15cm above the sofa.

Choose Your Colours & Tones

all art can act as a great starting point when you are decorating a room and have a blank canvas to start from. Firstly, select a piece of art which has colours in it that you are drawn to and then build your surrounding look from there. It’s best to pick out three or four key tones to form the basis of your scheme and to avoid visual chaos.

Choose Different Sizes

Your gallery wall doesn’t have to be symmetrical, but it does need to have visual balance. If you are going to use a large picture or painting, then make sure you pair it with a few smaller pieces.

Consider Lighting

Lighting can really elevate a gallery wall but first it’s important to ask yourself if lighting is required in this area. Spaces which already benefit from lots of light, or which have a particularly cluttered gallery wall may want to steer clear, so it doesn’t look too cluttered.

Creating A Gallery Wall With No Nails

The downside of having a gallery wall can be how many holes you need to put into the wall. If you are renting your property or don’t want to make holes in the wall, then you can use Command art hanging strips instead (readily available in most shops and on amazon.com). I’m a huge fan of these as they can hold a good amount of weight and they are easy to hang from and can be peeled off the wall successfully when you no longer need them. Just make sure you select ones that are strong enough to hold the weight you are hanging!

Changing Your Images!

The good thing about a gallery wall, is once it’s up, you can always refresh the contents of the frames. If you are the type of person who gets bored, you can always switch things up. You can even have fun with seasonally curated arrangements which need not cost the earth and can be brought out year after year. The same can apply for a playroom gallery wall, the images can change as the children grow and you can include pieces of their artwork as part of the gallery if you wish.

Hopefully these tips have inspired you. You can’t go wrong with a gallery wall, so just have some fun and include images you love! Please do get in touch if you would like my help and don’t know where to start with any interior dilemmas.