I think it’s safe to say most of us have been focusing a lot on decorating our homes over the past few months, theres nothing like a complete lockdown to make you realise your space could do with a little refresh! I have found that adding in small personal touches have given the biggest impact on my living space, one easy way of doing this is to create a beautiful gallery wall. Gallery walls are super effective because they take over a big space but unlike a wall decor or paint they can be completely customisable depending on your mood or the season.
I like to use a mixture of frames and sized photos and prints to make it completely unique and include little nods to my own life, prints of photos I have taken on amazing trips, quotes from books I love and art work by my favourite artists. One especially fun way of making your gallery wall unique is to include your pet, I have a lot of pictures of my cat Lola littered around the house but by having a custom print made by vectorpets.com I am able to include a fun Animal Illustration which fits seamlessly into a gallery wall! I think these would be especially fun in a hallway gallery wall as a sort of ‘welcome to our home’ alongside pictures of the family. It’s such an easy and effective way to make your space unique without compromising on the style of your space.
I thought it might be helpful to include some tips on how I create a perfect gallery wall:
Work with the space you have
If you have a large wall then it will be easier to fill it with larger prints first and then pepper in different sized frames to complement them. One mistake I made when I first started creating a gallery wall was using frames that were too small or too big for the space, it instantly makes the gallery wall look ‘off’ and takes away from the flow of the room.
Plan it out
An easy hack for creating the gallery wall that works best for your space is to use some contact/brown paper and trace around the frames you have and then cutting out the templates. It means you can then tack up the templates on the wall and play around with the positioning without making a ton of holes in the wall and having to move frames a million times!
Pick out a running theme
Be it a colour theme or a specific theme of the art, having a running theme of what your including in the gallery wall makes it flow more organically. I have a few different gallery walls but my favourite is our blue themed one in the living room, it happened completely by accident but every photo I wanted to include was blue toned (they are all from our travels) and so I decided to play off of that and focus in on those blue tones and make a uniform gallery wall that showcases the photos and our happy memories!
Mix in different textures
This can be literal texture, like textured prints or even wallpaper but it can also be to mix in things like quote wall art and album covers with a fine art print but all with a running theme, this gives the gallery wall a more casual feel that reflects your personal style and taste. I really love the new trend of fine art prints with modern touches like oil paintings of 18th century women blowing a neon bubble gum bubble, something like this alongside a V&A wallpaper print and then an 90’s album cover with neon touches ties all the pieces together (this would work for me as I love historical fashion, anything V&A inspired and I’m a 90’s kid through and through!)
Go bold
I think it’s as important to get the frames right as it is to get the art right. A mixture of brass, wood and black always works well for a more ‘pinboard’ style of gallery wall but if you are looking for something with a more uniform feel then I would recommend going for the same size and colour frames – I particularly like the ikea ribba frames and use them a lot all over our home, they are what I have used to create the blue toned gallery wall in our living room.
I think gallery walls are a really easy yet dramatic way to refresh your living space. I love that they can be done on a real budget and that they let you showcase your artistic flare in way that’s unique to your life and style. Have you created a gallery wall in your home? I’d love to know what sort of things you’ve included in your designs!
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