How To Hang a Gallery Wall in 5 Easy Steps

Always start with a large hero, or anchor piece where your eye will go first.  While yes, you want your wall to house all different shaped and sized pieces of art if you have a ton of smaller pieces with no large “wow” piece your wall won’t make the impact you want a gallery wall to always make.

The best way to do this is by laying the pieces on the floor. This way, you’ll be able to visualize different setups, making easy adjustments and tweaks as you decide.  You can then reproduce the layout with blue painter’s tape on the wall; it will accurately reflect the sizes of your pieces and how they’ll look placed together.  Try not to hang everything too closely together, you want about 2-3 inches at least between pieces.  Mix up the levels at which you hang, you don’t want it too look like perfect rows, instead try to hang pieces just above or below the other pieces.  And one last tip, once you have everything on the floor the way you’d like take a picture of it with your phone in case you forget exactly what piece went where as you begin to dissect it.

You want the gallery wall to have a personality and feel that it’s been collected over time.  By mixing and matching frames, as well as incorporating illustrations, paintings, prints and 3-D objects (like a juju feather hat, skateboard or sconce), you create an eclectic, lived-in feel. 

Save yourself some sanity and gather all of the tools you’ll need to see the project from start to finish.  That includes: a hammer, nails, level, tape measurer, pencil & eraser, blue painter’s tape, a small notebook (which is helpful for writing down the measurements of the art) and a screwdriver.

Simply Framed is genius and sells a ready-to-use tool kit (only $39), which contains everything you’ll need to do the job right, all in a durable carryall that won’t take up too much room in, if you’re anything like me, is an already overstuffed garage or closet.  

Remember that there is no specific formula for laying out a beautiful gallery wall. Don’t take yourself too seriously. Know that your gallery wall can always move, evolve and grow!