The art of home curation: the adventure of gallery walls - and how to get them right for you

Eclectic is the way to go in this large contemporary scheme

Gallery walls are an ideal way to design a unique and stimulating visual statement in your home. They appeal to the human love of collecting and creating and can record personally-significant topics or scenes and revive treasured memories.

It’s a mini exhibition to reflect who you are and your experience of life. An adventure - and a chance to take risks and experiment. The journey should be as enjoyable as the end result.

Also, it's not finite: just as we all grow, learn and absorb new ideas, home galleries don’t need to be static – you can extend and renew them as often as you like. You might want to embrace your changing tastes, reconfigure them for a new space or just to refresh your look to breathe new life into it or reflect a new furnishing style or colour scheme.

What’s more, they can work in almost any space in the home, adding drama to hallways, an avenue of interest to staircases, an entertaining diversion to downstairs loos and the perfect distraction to draw the eye away from ugly TV screens in living rooms.

The only settings to avoid – in addition to south-facing positions – are thoroughfares, where artworks, at person-or-large-dog-height, can be easily brushed up against or damaged. Be conscious of having enough space to stand away and see as well as get up close, so the display doesn’t seem too busy or make a small room feel over-crowded.

In short, creating a gallery wall is an ideal means of adding colour, interest and a heap of personality to your home. It’s also a way to decorate your interior which can suit any budget – basic or lavish. With care, upcycling and vintage finds can save momey and look equally as chic and fascinating as high-end purchases.

We’re offering these guidelines, yes: but the great thing is that there are really no hard and fast rules - so you can be as creative and experimental as you like.

Practical points

Having said that, of course, this form of home art curation isn’t just about randomly hanging your favourite pictures next to each other and hoping for the best; there’s a knack to curating a gallery wall to get it to look cohesive, with each piece contributing to – but not overpowering – the final aesthetic. So, before you get hammer-happy with pins and nails, here are some quick tips on working out your lay-out. Cherry pick the ones that suit you and your space.

To start, lay the collection on the floor (preferably on a plain background) and arrange it there first. A good guide is to keep at least 5cm between pictures and the distances between all of them roughly the same.

Take your time on this - it's the key to what follows. Step back and experiment with different combinations and layouts, which can range from uniform grids (which work for pieces in a series, for example) to more irregular combinations. For a larger salon-type hang, it’s usually best to place the larger pieces at the edges and corners and one more or less in the middle to anchor the arrangement. Generally, aim to have the centre of the display at eye level.

Next, stand on a chair and take a photograph of your layout and print it out. If you prefer short cuts, you can hold your phone up to the wall to see an impression of what it might look like. Or, much better, you can digitally set it against your wall, if your IT skills stretch that far. Once you’re ready to hang them, transfer the lay-out of each piece onto the wall by making paper templates. (A roll of wallpaper lining paper is handy here, with lengths taped together, if you want to be able to capture the entire arrangement to scale.) Trace and cut out the shape of each work, label it, mark the nail placement, then tape the templates to the wall, using paint-/wallpaper-friendly tape. Spirit levels are essential at this stage, as are tape measures, especially if it’s a formal, aligned arrangement of similar-sized and framed works. Hammer through the nail mark, tear off the paper, and hang the frame. Use a drill and Rawl plug for heavy pieces.

Alternatively, it may be the overall size and dimensions of the hang that are your starting points. So, if you have your whole collection ready to display and want to go for a more formulaic approach, you may choose to start by marking out an imaginary perimeter on the floor or the wall, using suitable tape, and then fill the spaces. Again, if you lay this out on the floor first it's much easier.

For a quick practical checklist, consult our seven-point guide at the foot of this blog.

Choosing your art

The first thing to do on the gallery adventure is to start collecting wall-worthy items you love. Foraging, searching, choosing and collecting are pure fun and lend a whole new purpose to holidays and days away. You can also look for inspiration from Instagram and Pinterest to spur you on.

Your chosen pieces could range from artworks and photos to postcards, maps and textiles. In fact, any objects that can be framed or hung. Variety is great – and, if you can afford it, please don’t just stick to mass-produced giclée prints but seek out original artworks and support your regional art community and the creativity of talented artists.

If you’re feeling more adventurous, try juxtaposing art styles, media and textures so that the eye is drawn to lots of different things – from old family photos and heirloom aquatints to textile works and relief pieces. Curation of this kind can take months, as you seek out the artworks that reflect your personality and buy old or new frames and panels to display them.

When you’ve amassed your pieces, look at them together and see if there’s a common theme or colour (perhaps based on your décor) you could build on – if not, that’s fine too, the gallery wall will just have more of an eclectic feel. 

In the frame

When considering framing, there are two obvious main options: to match or not to match.

Matching frames offer a cleaner look, where the focus lies more on the artworks themselves and the geometry of the structure. They’re also a good solution if you have a patterned wallpaper, to avoid the whole thing looking far too busy and fragmented or if the room is already busy with bright accessories and furnishings. 

However, mixing different materials, textures and colours of frames will create more character and variety and can work particularly well for larger layouts.

Before you start, if you intend to buy customised frames rather than upcycle old frames, find a good local framer – someone who cares about how your home will look and how each artwork will look. They might become your partner is putting the project together. Show them photographs of your wall and your room, as well as dimensions, and take their advice on what’s best for the particular work: for example whether something needs to be conservation-mounted (acid-free) or whether special items merit UV or art glass.

Monochrome and uniform define this study hang

Order versus variety

The joy of a gallery wall is that anything goes. A theme can be readily apparent or much more subtle – or you can have no theme at all. In fact, some designers think the best themed gallery walls are the ones where the theme is not immediately obvious and you have to look for it. In this case, you can juxtapose media and textures, techniques and styles and the narrative of the arrangement will often carry it through.

You may prefer something much less structured, believing that the art pieces must come first. If this is your view, we’d advise that you position the largest and most visually-dominant pieces first: as we said, typically, they will look best at the outside corners of the overall arrangements or in the very centre. Space out bold and less bold pieces, so you don’t get a dense patch of colour in one section.

In essence, we advise that a captivating gallery hang should look and feel connected. The way you achieve that – and the ingenuity you apply – is up to you!

Step-by-step: how to hang a gallery wall

·        Ensure the wall is clean and in good condition.

·  Consider furniture and furnishings around and in front of the display

·        Position your artworks on the floor, move them around and experiment with layouts, When happy, take a photo of the arrangement as your guide

·        Make paper templates, label each one and mark on the paper where the nail should go

·        Using a low-tack tape, fix the templates to the wall, keeping spaces between to a minimum of 5 cms, and make adjustments

·        Working from one side of the arrangement to the other, hammer or drill the nail mark on the paper template

·        Tear away the paper, hang the artwork or object, and carry on across the wall

·        Stand back and admire.

Or cheat a little – for a good cause: on a flat wall, for endless versatility, install a homemade or purpose-built picture rail and hang your images on visible or invisible wires. That way, changes are easy and can be as often and as many as you like

Picture rails make the possibilities endless