A GUIDE TO THE PERFECT GALLERY WALL
Creating a gallery wall in your home is a nice and personal way of decorating. Whatever motifs you choose to adorn your wall with, they reflect a great deal of your style and personality, while also helping to create vibrancy in your home. Below, we give you a guide on how to best decorate your favourite motifs and how to create the perfect gallery wall.
Choice of images
First, it's important to evaluate the look you want for your gallery wall. A good idea is to work with the layout of the room. Choose certain colours in the room to create a common thread in the decor, or find unique posters that reflect your personal interests. A good rule is to choose two dominant colours and two or three less dominant colours to create a balance. The dominant colours can either be colours you already have in your decor, or they can be colours that provide contrast. Take a look around your home and decide which colours will suit your décor best.
It is important to create a balance between the different motifs on your picture wall, and this can be done in many ways. A creative and bold way to create a dynamic look can be to mix photo art, personal photographs, paintings and alternative wall art. Creating a combination between different art genres with wall art such as mirrors, plaques and clocks gives an incredibly personal expression and adds texture to the whole decor. If you want a more stylish and minimalist look, you can limit yourself to one art genre and a few colour combinations.
Choosing posters for your new picture wall can be a long process, but the selection of motifs and colours is crucial to the final look of your picture wall. Spend a lot of time selecting and searching for posters, paintings and prints. Some choose to build an entire wall at once, while others spend years finding images and paintings that suit their personal style.
SHOP ART GENRES
Choice of frames
The importance of the frames you choose for your posters should not be underestimated. Picture frames create the outline of the gallery wall and can make each picture even more beautiful. If you want a coherent and minimalist look, you can choose the same type of frame for all your pictures. A slim and simple frame in aluminium or wood is ideal for a minimalist picture wall. If you want to use wooden frames, you can match them with other wooden elements you have in your home. This creates a beautiful common thread between the decor and the gallery wall.
If you want your picture wall to have a more expressive and vibrant look, you can explore colourful frames. Coloured frames can help bring out certain colours and tones in your pictures and look stunning on a painted wall. You can also choose to combine different frames, both across materials and colours but also styles. Browse for unique frames in thrift shops or online, where you can find Victorian gold frames, wooden frames with beautiful carvings or frames with a beautiful high-gloss lacquer finish
SHOP FRAMES
Patterns and tricks for mounting your gallery wall
Once you have chosen your beautiful motifs and frames, you need to mount them on your wall. The first step is to decide how big you want your gallery wall to be. Measure the wall and decide whether your picture wall should have a fixed or loose setup. A fixed setup usually has a limited square or rectangular setup. That's why it's extra important to measure your wall and frames, so you can achieve a completely clean and streamlined look. If you want a loose layout, your picture wall will have a more random and dynamic look, with more opportunity to expand on your gallery afterwards.
Below are three different templates for both fixed and loose setups to inspire your next picture wall.
The next step is to build an outline of your picture wall. One method is to build the picture wall on the floor. Here, you can lay out the pictures on the floor and then experiment with different setups to get an idea of how the posters will look together before you hammer nails into the wall.
Another method is to mark the size of the pictures with masking tape on the wall. This will give you a more accurate idea of how the pictures will take up space on the wall, and will make it easier to assess where to put the nail in. This process can be time-consuming, but is worth investing your time in, as a picture wall will be a big part of your home's décor for many years.
If you want to experiment with different layouts, images and compositions, most poster companies offer an interactive tool where you can create your own picture wall before you buy your posters.
Below you can explore some of our suppliers' interactive poster tools:
