DIY and Crafts

These helpful tips will make creating a stylish gallery wall easy

Article by Your Home and Garden

Art is a fantastic way to add life and personality to your home. Use these easy tips to create a gallery wall that will uplift and inspire

Create a gallery wall

Decide on a theme to tie your wall together: it could be colour, subject matter, medium or technique. We linked our corner gallery by technique (line drawings) and also colour, choosing shades of pinky orange.
To create extra interest and shape, use a variety of print sizes. For our two gallery walls we used three or four different sizes from A4 to A1.
When it comes to choosing frames, a subtle mix of colours and materials helps an arrangement look more organic. The style of frame is a personal choice – for our grouping of modern continuous-line drawings (right), we found that frames with a thin profile looked best.
Decide on the layout before you start hanging. Lay the prints on the floor and move them around until you find the best arrangement. Alternatively, make paper templates of the frames and move them about on the wall using Blu-Tack; once you’ve settled on the configuration, replace the pieces of paper with the pictures, one at a time.

Layout tips

A good starting point is to place a hero print in the middle (as we did with our foliage wall) and spread out from there.
Try to space the prints evenly to keep the flow from image to image consistent. Leave enough room for each to ‘breathe’.

How to create gallery wall

On the corner

A gallery wall needn’t cover just one wall – if you have an empty-looking corner, art will bring it to life.

Tip: If you’re renting and aren’t allowed to put things on the walls you can still create a gallery-style art display on a sideboard. mix up the frame sizes to create interest.

Lush and leafy

While botanical prints aren’t anything new, they are a great option for bringing the outside in, especially if you aren’t a massive indoor-plant fan (or maybe you are but want to enhance the effect). A gallery wall dedicated to foliage will certainly add impact and create a feeling of lushness and vibrancy.

Here we’ve moved the prints around to suit different furniture arrangements. For a casual, contemporary look, prop a print or two on a sideboard or stand some on the floor.

Buying & framing

There is art out there for every budget and framing is pretty affordable too, especially if you stick to standard sizes.

Some of our favourite stores for prints are: Simply Creative, Pop Motif, Endemic World, Maiko Nagao, Papier HQ, Paper Plane, Flux Boutique, A&C Homestore, Shut The Front Door and Freedom.

Frames are readily available – for instance, Spotlight, The Warehouse, Kmart and Farmers all have great selections. If you need custom framing, two of our go-to places are Endemic World and Factory Frames.

Tip: If funds are limited a great option is to buy downloadable prints through an online store such as Etsy. You’ll receive several files so you can print them out at different sizes, either on a home printer or at a print shop.