Tips on creating a gallery wall

I love a gallery wall – it creates a really personal and interesting look for your home and can be changed as many times as you like – plus they are actually very easy to put together. Here are some of our tips and tricks so that you can try it yourself.

Choose the location

Of course, the first thing you will have to decide is where in your home you would like the gallery wall to be. The living room or the staircase are both good locations as you will get to enjoy looking at the display regularly. Make sure you have a blank wall that has a large enough area to hang your pictures on. A plain coloured wall works well as it doesn’t distract you from the gallery. Patterned wallpaper may end up looking too busy.

Your personal style

What type of style do you have? Are you quite contemporary and like all the frames to match? Or do you prefer a more quirky, eclectic style with mismatched frames of different sizes? A gallery wall can be whatever you want it to be. You could just use photos or you could add in posters, items and paintings too.

The materials

Gather all of your prints, posters and frames together before you start, it will be much easier to create the gallery wall if you know how many pictures and the sizes that you are working with. Charity shops are often a good place to pick up frames as you’ll find many different sizes and styles. IKEA is also great for standard poster and picture frames that are sleek and stylish and value for money.

Decide if you are only using pictures or whether you want to add other items like mirrors or a clock so you can factor this into your design. You will also need a measuring tape, a hammer and picture hooks or you could use hanging strips that stick on and peel off.

Take your measurements

Measure the area and decide how you would like it to look. Do you want the pictures to hang randomly or would you like a more uniform shape? Make sure the items that you have will fit well into the area of wall which you have ear-marked.

Start designing the layout

You can start designing the layout either on paper by sketching out the shapes of the frames and where you would like them to go. Alternatively, you could do this by laying everything out on the floor and moving things around until you are satisfied. You could take a few pictures on your phone to see what works best. Think about colours, frames and sizes and what will compliment each other,

Hanging the pictures

There are a few ways you can go about hanging the pictures. Personally I tend to do this by eye, I like to start in the middle of the wall and hang the first picture and then visually work my way around. You can also cut out paper templates and stick them onto the wall, marking up where the fixings are. I tend to use picture hooks and a hammer but if you don’t like the idea of there being lots of holes in your wall or if you live in a rented property, Command strips are a good thing to go for. These hooks are self adhesive and are very strong. I use them to hang fairy lights at Christmas and they are sturdy but also can be easily removed.

The beauty of a gallery wall is that it can easily be changed – you can swap out prints, move pictures around or even change the frames to keep things feeling fresh and new.