Gallery Wall Do’s and Don’t

Every home needs a gallery wall: a place where you can put all those crazy family photos you love while still looking nice and neat. But we’ve all seen good and bad ones that either make the room feel cluttered or make the room feel warm and inviting. So, what should you do to get the warm inviting feeling? Here are some easy steps.

Pick the right place, get it prepped

The first thing you should do is figure out where you want your pictures to go. There is probably a large, blank wall somewhere in your house that needs filling. Often, these spaces are above stairs because there isn’t any furniture or electronics in those areas. Many times, gallery walls are also hung above couches. You need to decide if you want an entire wall, floor to ceiling filled with pictures, or do you just want a limited space above a couch?

After you pick the place you want to hang all these pictures, get it ready to go. Are you planning to paint that wall? Get that done first. Are there any holes that need to get puddied? This is a good time to start. Are there heaters that need to get covered with baseboard heater covers? Get that done. Remember that the success of the gallery is going to be about the whole picture of the space, not just the pictures themselves.

Make your arrangement on the floor

Planning is they key to success with gallery walls because when you see it all, you often want to change things. So getting all your frames together and putting them on the ground to get the perfect arrangement is the easiest way to figure out what you really want to put on your wall. Plus, it makes prepping the wall for the pictures easier. According to the Boston Globe, you want to try and put in some form of consistency in your gallery to help it all tie together.

For example, having all the same color of frame will make it all come together, even if the frames are different and the images don’t match. In a grid type gallery wall, you would want matching frames, but in other instances, having a color or two that go together is much better. In fact, matching too much might end up looking awful unless the photos are being hung in a grid pattern.

Paper pattern on the wall

Another thing you can do is take a paper pattern on the wall for each of the frames (paper in the size of each frame with a mark for where the nail would go on the frame) and then put them up on the wall with painter’s tape. By doing this, you can see the total picture on the wall before you actually start putting in nails. And it makes getting the nails in the right spot a lot easier. Just hammer away, pull off the paper, and hang the pictures on the nails. You will end up with the perfect gallery wall.

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