How do I hang a great gallery wall in my home? Seems complicated! 

I live in Vancouver, Canada and I have lived in a variety of small spaces with a lot of artwork! I have made art buying apart of monthly routine and created an art budget that I add to every month with a percentage of my income. The account allows me to continually be engaged in following artist and planning my next purchase. Some years I buy a few smaller pieces and some years I find the prefect larger piece and save up!

To fit all of my art collection in my small city living space I have had to hang the art in- what has now become very popular- a gallery wall style. A “gallery style hang” (sometimes called a “salon style hang”) is when a wall has multiple pieces of art all hung up together. I have learned a lot of the years of how to present artwork in my own art shows, groups shows with the members of Thrive Together Network and in my own home.

I created an entire Skillshare class all about this process of hanging art in your home. Here is the step-by-step instructions on how to get art from the “floor” to the wall…

Here are my top tips for hanging your own beautiful gallery wall:

Find your anchor.

Have one large-ish piece that anchors the whole gallery wall and hang this first. This piece can be in the centre of your wall and then you can hang your smaller pieces around this focal point.

To the floor, we go.

I wish I could tell you that I make a plan and measure everything before I get the hammer out, but I don’t! What I do, do though is lay all my art pieces on the floor and make a plan that way. This was I can move around pieces and make choices before the nails are in the wall.

The 3-inch rule.

As I said I tend to just go for it when it comes to actually hanging my art in my gallery wall. The measuring rule I do follow is spacing the artwork out by 3 inches around each piece. When you are doing your floor layout make sure you consider this so you have enough room for all the work.

Variety is key.

The most interesting gallery walls have a variety of sizes of artwork and artwork orientation. Mix and match big and small and vertical and horizontal.

Frame it up.

I love using different frames in my gallery walls. Design blogs out there recommend 2 or 3 colours of frames in one gallery wall and I think this is good rule when you are first starting to collect art and hang different pieces together. I cheat a bit and tend to mix and match vintage frames in and other shapes in my walls. I created a guide below to explain how to plan your layout to balance the colours of your frames and artwork.

Beyond the frame.

Now that I have a small art collection going and seeing the work up in my gallery walls, I realized most pieces I own are square or rectangle (of course). I wanted to change this up a bit, see what different shapes would do, this led me to look for different shaped frames, ceramic pieces and then eventually to make my own artwork on wood that I could cut to different shapes called “Woodcuts”. I love how a wall can look truly unique when the work is beyond the square frame.

Have fun!

There is literally no wrong or right was to hang your gallery wall. Your job is collect art and get it on you walls! I hope these tips and tricks will help you in the process. I have more resources and free guides below!

xo jamie

PS: I created a whole class all about hanging art in your home. Take the class for free with using this special link- click here!

More Resources…