As I’ve recently found myself with extra hours of free time on my hands, I’ve begun to tackle the numerous home projects that I read about in magazines, see on Pinterest, or have generally added to my to-do list but haven’t gotten around to. While many are largely organizational, behind-the-scenes projects, the big project I just finished (and am pretty damn proud of) is our new gallery wall.

Now, you’ve probably seen gallery walls somewhere by this point, as they seem to be a trend in home decor at the moment. And if you have one, awesome! I’m loving mine, so I hope you’re getting the same enjoyment out of yours. But if you don’t have one yet, here’s a little “how to” guide for putting together a gallery wall in your own home.

First step is to decide whether you want a gallery wall or not, and where the best place for one is in your home. Remember, you’re going to be putting up a lot of frames and/or artwork, so you don’t want the area to already have a lot of competing shapes and colors going on. We live in a loft, so I have a very tall, very white wall that was looking pretty sad, and the artwork hanging there had an off-center feel ever since I reorganized the room around a few months ago.

The posters just didn’t fit our style anymore, and they ended up off center when we moved the furniture around.

Also, choose a room people use! You may have bare walls in that dusty dining room, or modern library slash office that you swore you’d work in from home, but a gallery wall should be a statement piece, a talking point that you and your visitors can see and enjoy without getting “the full tour.” Luckily, living in a loft apartment gave me little to no choice of where I was going to put my gallery wall, but I at least could chose to put it on a wall that would allow people to get an up close look at the artwork if they wanted.

Now that you’ve chosen where you want your gallery wall, determine how big you want it to be. Deciding this first will help you plan out what artwork you use, what frames you need to buy, and can save you headaches down the line. I don’t think there’s any firm rule on size - if you want a neat collection of four pieces of artwork, great! If you want to turn your hallway into one of those old English manor portrait galleries, go for it! At the end of the day, you need to love it, so size up your wall and go with your gut.

insert picture of pride and prejudice portrait gallery

Since I was putting the gallery wall behind my couch, I decided to make the width slightly smaller than the couch itself, and center the whole installation based on the couch. My exact dimensions ended up being 5.5” wide and 3.5” tall. With these dimensions in mind, I could begin planning the layout of my wall.

I’m a very visual person, and we’re renting our apartment, so I wanted to be sure of my layout before I poked holes all over the wall. So I did a few sketches, and then created a digital representation of the wall that allowed me to see everything before I started buying frames and getting prints.

I’m a painter and a photographer, and my boyfriend is also a photographer, so I knew I wanted to showcase exclusively our work in the gallery wall. Starting with one painting for size reference, I built the rest of the gallery wall around that canvas. A few tips from my planning stages:

• Get your frame dimensions correct. I made an initial sketch with many, many slots for pictures… only to start measuring and realize that most of the frames would be 4x6 or smaller. Not exactly what I was going for. That’s also where it’s helpful to start with one piece that you already know the dimensions for, and build around it.
• Don’t go too crazy with specialty frames. I first had frames that split in two, or held four photos in a panoramic frame, and I was really enthusiastic and thinking “Yeah! I can show off so many photos!” But custom matting is expensive, and almost all those ‘bright’ ideas would have involved a significant amount of work (and many visits to a custom framing shop). Stick to normal frame set-ups.
• Don’t over-do it. Again, you can make a gallery wall as big as you want, or as small (down to four; after four it’s not really a gallery wall, it’s just some pictures) as you want, but once you’ve picked your size, don’t cram in more frames than is comfortable. Each piece needs some padding around it to breathe.
• Stay open-minded about shapes/materials. A gallery wall doesn’t have to be all rectangles! It doesn’t have to be all photos! Play around in your planning stage to see what you like before committing.
• If you’re doing all artwork, keep in mind the colors you’re choosing. I mixed in some black and white shots with my photos so as not to overwhelm the installation with clashing colors. I also kept color distraction minimal by deciding to go with all black frames for the photos.

As you can see, I went through several iterations of frames, positions, and prints before the final phase.

Once I had my layout set and my images mostly chosen, I set about ordering frames and prints. For frames, I got some on Amazon, purely because I wanted fast shipping, and then added frames and mats as needed from the local art store. If you need mats for frames, check the art store rather than a framing store! A good art store will have reasonable prices on standard sized mats that shouldn’t break the bank. I went with an off-white color, rather than pure white, because the subtle difference kept the framed photos from feeling too stark.

If you’re printing photos, do your research. I use Shutterfly all the time for photo books and 4x6 prints to send my grandparents, but their large scale printing leaves something to be desired. And since these photos were going on the wall for display, I wanted them to look as good as possible. In the end I chose to print with Mpix, and I would definitely recommend them if you’re looking to print photos for your gallery wall. The prints looked great, they have special printing for black and white photos, and the packaging was done with great care that impressed me. Also, if you’re not used to framing photos with mats, you want to choose prints that are the right size for the mat, not the frame. All mats will tell you what their interior dimensions are as well as their exterior ones.

Once you’re this deep in your gallery wall project, the arrival of all the frames and prints is kind of like Christmas. Now you can put all your prints into frames and get to hanging your gallery wall!

Yarn is infinitely useful for home projects!

Like I said before, we rent our apartment, and I didn’t want to create a bunch of nail holes if I could help it. So before I started hanging, I plotted out the gallery boundaries on the wall. I used yarn (I have a giant bag of knitting, so this worked well) to mark out the outer boundaries of my plan.

Then I went to work, starting with the large painting I was using as a focal anchor, then working my way out from there. For hanging you’ll definitely want:

• a leveler
• a pencil to mark where the nails should go
• a measuring device (some frames’ hooks are far below their edge, so I found it easiest to mark the wall at the frame edge, then measure the edge-to-hook distance and mark the wall again for the nail hole)
• hammer and nails

Once you’ve finished hanging all the frames, step back and admire your work! You’ve got a kick-ass gallery wall that works as a great conversation piece, and that you can enjoy every day. Plus, any time you get tired of the artwork, you can just change out the prints and suddenly have a brand new room!

End result!