Every home should have a gallery wall. I’ll explain why and give you the tips you need to get it right.
And guess what? This advice is renter friendly!
Tips & Ideas for Creating a Gallery Wall
Gallery walls can elevate your home from builder basic to elegantly curated.
If you’ve ever walked through a grand, historic home you’ll notice every one of them has some form of gallery wall. Even if you don’t have an ancient family home, filled with historic treasures, you can still achieve that carefully-curated-through-the-ages aesthetic with a beautifully executed gallery wall.
Instead of bringing home trinkets from your travels, that sit in a cupboard, gathering dusk, buy art and hang it.
How many times have you purchased a shirt or mug that ends up taking up space in your drawer or collecting dust in your cupboard until you decide to get rid of it? Here is a perfect solution: try collecting art on your travels instead. You will have a treasure from your vacation that you can easily display in your home. You will see it frequently and will often be reminded of the happy memories from your travels.
Furthermore, art is something you can share. The memories associated with it live on in those with whom you share its stories. Many of the pieces of art in my own home were collected by my mother on her travels. I cherish them even more than art I have collected myself because it reminds me of her.
Gallery walls can add intrigue to an otherwise boring wall or cover a hideous one.
I’ve talked a lot on this blog about ways to dress up boring walls. But, sadly, many of those solutions aren’t renter friendly. This is.
As a renter, one of the struggles you face is how to add visual interest to plain walls, without painting them. You may also need to hide walls covered in hideous and/or peeling wallpaper that your landlord won’t let you remove. Prior to buying our home, my husband faced both of those dilemmas. Can you guess how we fixed this? Adding a gallery wall!
Story time: my experience with the transformative power of a gallery wall
Our college apartment had hideously outdated and peeling wallpaper that seriously detracted from the appeal of the apartment. But, we were students on a tight budget so our apartment options were limited. Our first weekend there, we went to the landlord’s office. We asked if we could strip the wallpaper and paint the living room white. We even offered to pay! He looked at us like we had two heads and politely told us no.
Disappointed, but still determined to make our dingy apartment a cozy home, we decided to hang up some pictures. That’s when we discovered the transformative power of art and, specifically, a gallery wall. We covered our living room wall with all the free art we could get our hands on. A.k.a. art donated to us by sympathetic family members. Everyone who came to visit commented on our art and how welcoming our apartment felt. No one even noticed the ugly wallpaper.
We’ve had a gallery wall in some form or another in every apartment or house that we have lived in since.
Tips for getting it right
Don’t underestimate the utility of Command Strips
As a renter, Command Strips are your best friend. We used these countless times as renters. Even now, as homeowners, we prefer to use them when possible. In my opinion, you should opt for the hanger with the nail. It is the slightly more expensive option, but it is much easier to ensure your art is level when you can adjust the picture wire. Furthermore, the option to attach two strips to the picture and the wall gives you a higher risk of peeling off paint.
We have never had an issue with Command Strips not holding their specified weight or falling off the wall. In my experience 9.5 times out of 10, they can be removed without pulling off any paint. That happened to us at one rental. It was a relatively easy fix though. We collected the paint chips in a bag and had a sample color matched so we could touch it up.
The art you select should have a common theme or color scheme
While I’m a big proponent of gallery walls, they can be tricky to get right. You want the pictures you select to have a common theme, whether it is color or subject matter. However, you don’t want them to be be too similar; i.e., you don’t want identical frames for every piece.
Arrange your art around your furniture & lighting
If you’re creating your gallery wall in a room, rather than a hallway, you need to consider the placement of the furniture and lighting in the room first. For example, in the photo below, the placement of the desk and the privacy screens was chosen first and the gallery wall was arranged around that.
Likewise in the following photo. The height of the back of the sofa and the location of the sconces created the bounds within which the gallery wall could be arranged.
Don’t limit yourself to pictures
A gallery wall doesn’t have to be limited to pictures. Plates are another option that you’ll see quite often. This bathroom with jewelry displayed on the wall is pretty spectacular as well.
I hope these tips help you create a special gallery wall in your own home. Please let me know. Have a lovely weekend!
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-Sasha
