I have always hung things on walls (and ceilings; Harry Potter Posters of course) but as a sophomore in  college I started working at a portrait studio that specialized in the end result of your session being a large photo hung at your home or office as opposed to just handing over disc or gallery. I loved watching the process of picking a photo, frame, and then hanging it in their house.

This carried over in my making my favorite part of decorating our house being the walls.

My main wall, I actually REALLY it loved in our town house and was sad it wouldn’t be possible for it to be as intricate  and three-demensional (I loved being able to have a shelf and have a plant, it literally adds life to you wall)  in our greenhouse but it is still one of my favorite walls and I enjoy seeing the memories every day

Gallery Wall in townhouse, and that bench was one of my favorite parts, it was also seating at our wedding

Gallery Wall in Greenhouse, it hang where people walk, so no shelves or benches 🙁

I probably should have cleaned my house before taking the pictures but I am just too excited about having a blog that I am excited about. Oops.

My wall/walls are super traditional and compiled to simply draw attention to photos. It actually looks a lot my design/lettering style if you think about it, black and white and pictures. Because I know most people don’t share my style tastes I paired down my gallery wall advice to the bare minimum to be applicable to almost any style.

THREE STEPS TO GALLERY WALL

Which came first the wall or the photo? That probably makes no sense but there are two possible thought processes at the start of a gallery wall
A) I have this wall and I want it be a gallery wall
Or
B) I have this photo(s)/piece(s) of art and I want to display it because it’s important to me

Whichever boat you are in, you have the potential for a fun/intimidating process but I have some thoughts to keeping it to the fun side

Bonus if you are struggling to pick “the wall” simply walk into the room you want to have it and see which wall you look at first. You may need to get a few friends to weigh in as well

1) There are no actual rules, you don’t have to a wall that looks super traditional like mine and you don’t have copy your friends. What should be highest on your list is showcasing people and things that are important to you.
I like gallery walls because I can apply elements of graphic design like hierarchy and color to show want is important to me and Tyler. Sidenote you may notice was is important to me and Tyler is me and Tyler, my brother in law likes to call out house a “shrine” to us.

2) To pick the size of the pieces your hanging… Figure out where people will stand to view your wall. If it’s a hallway or up a stair case you probably want to keep the photos and knickknacks smaller so they can be appreciated it from close distances. My wall is viewed when you first walk in the house, in the kitchen and sitting in the recliner so my photos are bigger. The “rule” is the faces of the people in the photos should be 3-4 stacked fingers tall. Since I wanted to show my dress in our wedding portrait I ignored that.

3) If you’re nervous about how big your wall is and your space will allow it use bigger pieces of I had used 5×7 this wall would have had 20 or more photos. Because I kept everything bigger I only had to come up with ten things.
I think sometimes we are scared of the statement of large prints (or their price tag) but when your wall needs it to look complete it is worth the investment. And know that on a big wall and 8×10 still isn’t big. Most gallery walls need at least one 16×20 (or bigger 😉 ) to make an awesome statement.

If you make a gallery wall, I want to see it! It’s like a huge scrapbook that everyone can look through at once.

I tried to keep this simple but do you have anything to add?

Frames: Handcrafted Framing