Gallery walls are a huge trend right now, although I use that word lightly because they have always been around... Wealthy art collectors historically have always covered their walls in art, complete with gold-leafed frames. Exhibit A being the Medici Family, who had so much art (and wealth) during the Renaissance that they barely knew what to do with it. "How shall we display all of our wealth?" "Why, a gallery wall of course!"
(This is from the Pitti Palace in Florence, Italy. While not necessarily the original hanging locations, the Pitti Palace was used to store and exhibit the Medici families many artistic treasures. You can imagine it looked something like this back in the day!)
Any who, I digress. For many, putting together a gallery wall might seem like a daunting task, but today I'm sharing my tips and tricks, how I pulled it off in my apartment. To start, you need to figure out a few things:
1) What you want to go on it. Do you have an art collection like I did that you want to show off?
Start to collect in one place all the things you will be including, and see how they look together. I knew I'd have framed art, mirrors, framed photographs, and a few extra non-framed items for variety.
2) How much space do you have to work with & what type of layout do you want?
In my apartment the kitchen/dining/living room are all one big room, which left me with a long wall. I chose a long, linear arrangement to make the space appear even longer (and less square). It also visually connects the living and the dining room.
Back tracking a little here, I thought I'd share a few hints on choosing frames; there are many different approaches to framing art in a gallery wall. Many people pick one color frame & frame thickness and stick to just that. Others keep the color the same but vary the frame style & thickness. If you're feeling daring, you can do what I did and totally mis-match your frames! I went with this look because I wanted it to look eclectic and less "staged", and it allowed me to coordinate the art with the frame a touch more. To make it not look too crazy, I suggest sticking to a few frame colors. I went with dark brown, light brown, silver, green, yellow, and blue. (I guess that's more than a few!) The trick is to have multiple things in each color, so that is all looks planned and not one piece sticks out too much. Having the more "neutral" brown and silver frames helps ground the colors. What helps with the mis-matched look too is to have frames/objects that incorporate two of your colors; I have a yellow and silver frame, a green and dark brown frame, a yellow cross wrapped in brown wire, etc. This adds a level of consistency.
Now that you've collected your gallery wall objects, framed any art, and figured out about where you want it to be, it's time to make it happen! Using painters tape, mark on the wall where you want this gallery wall to go. For my wall, I measured from the ceiling across the whole thing, putting little pieces of tape that I later connected with longer pieces.
Then, start laying out your art on the floor nearby. I actually did this step over several days, because I kept adding art as I found frames for them. It helps to step back and look from a distance to see if your arrangement looks good, what spots are drawing too much attention to them, etc. You can see that my scheme even evolved more after I took this picture!
After you have an idea about layout, it's time to hang everything! As I started hanging, I did end up changing things around as I went. I also, as you can see from the new tape line, realized that my original marks on the wall were a bit too low, so I moved the tape up as I went. These things will happen!
And voila! I am really happy with how it turned out. I love looking at all the art I've collected from my travels everyday, along with some memories from my favorite places. It takes me back to Florence everyday!
Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed my how-to! This post is a part of my Apartment Tour week, make sure you check out my Decorating From Existing Pieces Post, Living Room Tour post, and my Bedroom Tour post.
Have you ever put together a gallery wall? What tips/tricks have you found that help?
--Caroline
