The Gallery Wall

Filling a bare wall, showing off a collection of wedding photos, adventures, memorabilia, you name it, the gallery wall trend does not seem to be going anywhere. Gallery walls can be used to encompass almost any style: playful, sophisticated, soothing, and their versatility doesn’t hurt their popularity. 

In my first Chicago Dearborn apartment, it was just a little studio with one long wall that spread from the front door, to the living “area” to my sleeping zone. A gallery wall was my solution to add color and vibrance to an already borderline tolerable space without delineating the already small space. 

Inspiration

Reality

saying I “nailed it” would be rough…

I didn’t quite achieve my inspiration goals, and instead an excessive amount of wall punctures, but it was fun while it lasted. Here are a few things I learned:

It’s great to have a plan. I mapped out all the photos I wanted to hang either on the floor shuffling the design or with blue tape on the wall. 

Even if you don’t want it to look like you have a theme, have a theme in mind. It’s too easy to get carried away, have a broad range of art and frames, spend too much money on just “filling space” and it turns out looking chaotic. I moved out of this apartment 7 years ago and I think I have gotten rid of most of those frames. I did it on the cheap because I knew it wasn’t forever, but it probably wasn't the wisest way to decorate wall space. In hindsight, I should have splurged for a fun single large piece of art I could take with me. 

Fast forward to the Scott condo, I had the perfect wall for the perfect gallery wall. I was at it again. This time around, I wanted a more cohesive look with a grid to stretch the entire height of the wall. The idea was to use the same frame, and photographs with a cohesive feel: travel photos. This way, I didn’t have to select mutually exclusive frames to match the artwork, and I can easily swap out for new memories without disrupting the entire wall. 

Here’s where I get really nit picky. When putting the photos in the frames, I was extremely attentive to the angles, focus, and subject matter of each picture. For example, if a picture was taken looking at a subject at an angle, it would need to be next to a picture from a different viewpoint. Or a picture from Paris (an urban environment) would need to be next to a giraffe (nature). 

It doesn’t end there - each picture is exactly three inches from one another, and the border of the gallery is exactly 6 inches from the edge of the wall. Take the time: use a tape measure, mark everything with pencil, and use a level.