Do you have a home decor bucket list? I sure do, and while it contains some things I will never achieve in our current home (wrap around porch, ocean view), many are things that are achievable with some effort. One of the items on my list is to have a large gallery wall.
Before Photos
For the past five years, the wall above our living room sofa has displayed an oversized farmhouse clock with faux window frames on either side. I enjoyed having the clock as the focal point of the room, but I’ve been ready for a change for about a year now. A gallery wall has been on my mind for some time.
If we go back further than five years ago, you can see what our living room looked like before I gave the space a makeover. The walls were a dingy beige, I hadn’t yet upholstered my grandparent’s antique sofa or applied board and batten to the walls, and I didn’t have a cohesive design for the room. I had some IKEA prints on the wall but they were too diminutive for the cathedral ceilings and large expanse of wall above the sofa.
I have purchased art prints from different stores before and had them all framed at the same time only to discover that they didn’t look good together. The tone of the paper may have been too different or the colouration or styles just didn’t quite work together. It takes a lot of talent to be able to combine an eclectic mix of artwork and I’m not going to talk about that in this post. Rather, this post is about the easy way to create a gallery wall, by purchasing everything from one source and choosing a tested and true layout.
Combing Artwork
The key to combining artwork is to balance repetition and contrast. You want repeated elements to unify your gallery wall and contrasting elements to keep it from getting boring. To create unity, you could use the same frame finish for all your pieces, only varying the sizes. Alternatively, you could use two different frame finishes that compliment each other such as black and a light wood tone, or white and a wood tone. I chose to have all my frames in light oak.
You also want your artwork to tie together through the colour palette and theme. I choose neutrals for my colour palette and a loose theme of nature-inspired photography. My happy place is the outdoors, hiking, canoeing, and camping, so I chose artwork that transports me to nature. I choose not to be too specific about the nature theme (e.g. all beach photos, or all summer images) so that there would be a variety of different things to look at. I also made sure to include images that represented spring, summer, and fall, so that the artwork would look appropriate in every season. Winter was ignored since it’s not my favourite.
Starting Point
A good starting point is to consider the tones in your home and then choose one or two prints that really speak to you. Then you can build the rest of the gallery wall around these special pieces. I immediately fell in love with the beach sunset print and the daisy print and then selected the rest of the pieces to support these. Remember to choose some pieces that are more subtle and allow the more dramatic pieces to stand out. I choose the dandelion print for this very reason.
To Matte Or Not To Matte
Many of the prints from Poster Store have a white trim around them which simulates the look of a matte. However, you can also purchase mattes very affordably from this shop. I ended up only purchasing one matte for a print that didn’t have the white border (can you spot which one?). One further framing note- the frames come with acrylic glass rather than real glass and there aren’t options for purchasing low glare, or UV protectants like many other framing stores offer.
The Easy Way To Create A Gallery Wall
Poster Store has, by far, the best inspiration for creating gallery walls. When you view one of their art pieces, you can see what it looks like in several different settings. You can also gather ideas about which prints look good together. Start with your budget and determine how many pieces you can purchase. Then, look at all the arrangements that contain that number of pieces. I think it would be easy to add on a few pieces in the future if your budget doesn’t permit purchasing everything at once. For a more interesting look, choose some pieces that are in landscape orientation to complement those in portrait orientation.
Make sure to purchase your prints and frames during a sale. These happen quite often, so you likely only have to wait a few days for big savings.
