How I Created my Colourful Gallery Wall
I get soooo many questions about my gallery wall, which amazes me as it was literally the first thing we did in the house when we moved in! I thought it might be handy just to condense down the main things I thought about when planning it out to help you create your own colourful gallery wall! Also, if you want to see even more of the living room I have a whole tour here.
1. Pick your core prints
I always start a gallery wall by picking a few key pieces I want to feature. I make these the focal point and then attempt to work some magic around them to bring a cohesive look together! I find it the most fun starting this way though, rather than trying to pick everything at once, for me it works best if I have something to be inspired by and bounce other prints off of!
2. Vary up your sizes
I always think it’s nice to use a good mix of sizes for your prints, to ensure the eye focus in on your core choices before bouncing about the rest of the set. One thing I do think really helps though is to not have every single print a different size - if you look at the image above I have at least two of most of the frame sizes which I find helps also keep a sense of purposefulness to the ensemble. When choosing your sizes, you want to make sure there’s not too steep a drop inside difference as well. You don’t want one massive print and then loads of tiny ones, try to find a mixture of large, medium and small to get a good balance.
3. Orientation
Similar to the last point, I really think a mix of landscape and portrait helps a gallery wall breathe. Our larger landscape we have here helps move the eye across the space by creating almost a bridge between the two largest prints.
4. Spread out the colours
If you’re going for a fairly colourful or rainbow themed gallery wall it is so important how you place the different colour prints! You want to make sure similar colours aren’t all clustered together. For example, I’ve made sure that the red and pink prints have some green and blue in between them to help break it up. I’ve also chosen the main prints so that they each have a fairly distinct core colour each as this meant I could spread them apart easily, with the smaller prints acting as buffers between the colours.
5. Lay out your design on the floor first
Bit of an obvious one maybe, but I cannot stress enough how important it is to lay the frames and prints out on the floor before you put them up on the wall! This will help you spot any balance problems you have and allow you to really visualise it in the space before you commit! It’s the classic method, but that’s just because it really does work!
Hope these tips are helpful to you in creating your own colourful gallery wall! Putting ours together is still one of my favourite projects I’ve done for the house as I just had the most fun doing it so hopefully you will too! Plus, don’t forget to check out my Living Room Tour post for even more shots of how this works within the room!
Eliza x
