If you have a ton of family photos and a wall space for all your photos, you should try installing a wall gallery at home. The gallery walls are incredibly beautiful, but they have so many chances to turn away or go wrong with all the objects and photos you are trying to hang on the wall. I had a wall in my house that just begged to be looked at in the gallery, but I was always too scared to try it.
I finally plucked up the courage to do it and learned some really valuable lessons along the way. You don’t have to go through trial and error like me; just follow this step-by-step guide to learn how to properly hang a gallery on the wall in your home. Not only will it look great, this tutorial is also very simple. And if you’re looking for some more inspiration, check out this slideshow to find some great ideas for your gallery wall.
Step 1: Get inspired
First of all, you need to define your personal style of the gallery wall. Check out the slideshow at the beginning of this post to determine your gallery wall style. Do you like randomness or grid? Matching works of art or diverse? Matching or mismatched frames? Art objects? The sky is the limit.
Step 2: Spread it out
Lay out the pieces of the gallery wall on the floor. Start with a large central part and build up. Use the inspiring images from step 1 to help. If you find it difficult to decide on a composition, try the following: when you like something, take a picture on your phone. Then make another arrangement. Do this several times, and then scroll through the pictures. This “editorial look” can help you decide what you like best.
Step 3: Model it
Then, to make sure that your composition looks good on the wall and that its height seems appropriate, model it on the wall with paper. Circle each frame on a sheet of kraft paper or tissue paper, cut to size and attach to the wall in the desired order. Ask yourself, is it properly grouped around the nearest furniture? Is the height convenient? Does it fill the space correctly?
In our example, we wanted the composition to be positioned a few inches lower than the dining chairs that would be standing at the dining table in front of it, and our measurements went perfectly. Please note that this step is optional, but it helps to avoid mistakes (for example, unwanted nail holes)!
Step 4: Frame
If you haven’t done it yet, now is the time to turn all your art. In the example shown, we had enough frames and works of art so that we could flexibly change the composition and switch them as needed, so inserting images into frames was our last step before hanging.
Step 5: Score and hang
One of the advantages of using paper bags is that they make it easier to place nails. You can mark each paper with the place where the nail of the frame should be placed, and when the paper is on the wall, hammer it directly into the mark on the paper, tearing it off after that. Then comes our favorite part — hanging these gorgeous frames on this gorgeous wall.
