DIY: creating a gallery wall in our living room

Gallery walls are really beautiful when they're executed well, but more often than not, they look like a hodgepodge of frames that don't quite work together. In the past, I've tried to pull from whatever frames I happen to have on hand, and it always misses the mark. This time around, I decided to be a little more thoughtful and plan out my entire gallery wall beforehand, so I could avoid nailing 1000 holes in my wall along the way. I'm pretty happy with the outcome for once, so here are my steps for creating a gallery wall in the least frustrating way possible:

Step 1: choose a color scheme that works for your art / your home:

Lucas inherited some really great black and white prints from his Cuban grandparents, so I decided to create a neutral gallery wall so we could put those on display. We also use a lot of neutrals in our living room, so the black and white color scheme tied in pretty well.

Step 2: create unity and consistency

The prints were framed and matted in a variety of ways when we received them, so I decided to start the framing from scratch in order to create a bit of unity and tie everything together. The prints we received are pretty traditional, so I scoured the internet for some more modern prints to mix it up a bit. I chose 2 framed prints from Minted and 4 framed prints from Artfully Walls. I also decided to reframe the Cuban prints through Framebridge, so I shipped them off to get a facelift.

I created this layout through PowerPoint to test and hone the design.

Step 3: map it out

The nice thing about Framebridge, Artfully Walls, and Minted is that these sites give previews of the final product. Before pressing the "submit order" button, I took screen shots of all of the frames and then layered them on top of a photo of our blank wall. You can do this through Photoshop, but you can also just do it through PowerPoint to make things super easy. I chose more frames than I ultimately needed and then used the layout to organize and refine the design until I was happy with it. 

I laid out all of my frames and tweaked it on the floor before mapping it out on the wall. 

Step 4: lay all frames out on the floor

Once all of my frames were delivered, I tested the design out on the floor. Some of the frames were slightly smaller / larger than I'd anticipated, so I tweaked the design a bit. You'll see that the final product isn't quite the same as the layout I created, but it was close. 

I used painters tape to make an outline of the frames and then checked it out from different angles before I started nailing.

Step 5: use painters tape to avoid insanity

I measured the dimensions of the frames on the floor and then found the center of my wall. From there, I put painters around the edges of each frame and then carefully picked it up and transferred it to the wall. I tweaked the placement on the wall until I was happy with it, and then I started to nail.

Nico posing with the final result!

Step 6: hang your frames

The nice thing about using painters tape is that it's pretty easy to get the design right on your first attempt. I am proud to say I didn't have to re-nail a single time and it looked pretty good the first time. 

Voila! That's it.