Five steps to creating a sensational gallery wall in your home
Regardless of your interior style, a gallery wall is an excellent addition to any room. Oozing contemporary class, it can be a great way to bring a growing art collection together and give your walls the stylish boost you may be craving after staring at them for a year and a half!
SINGULART’s Head Curator and Exhibitions Manager, Marion Sailhen, presents art around the world every single day, making colours pop with eye-catching placements. Read on for her top tips for getting that sensational gallery wall in your own home:
Express yourself
Arguably the best part about making a gallery wall in your home is that… it’s your home! This means your priority should be ensuring your imagination and inspirations are at the forefront of your design choices, not necessarily what you’ve seen in an IKEA catalogue.
According to Sailhen: “We create gallery walls to infuse a touch of personality in our home.” She recommends taking your time to collect contemporary and/or antique works that suit your taste.
Embrace the eclectic
Don’t be afraid to mix up your gallery wall with a wide range of genres and styles – think portraits next to landscapes, next to still life works. You can also create quirky combinations with different techniques, such as placing a painting next to a drawing, or perhaps below a striking wall sculpture.
Next, include a variety of sizes and shapes: big and small, square, and round… this will provide your gallery wall with movement and energy. For Sailhen, too much symmetry takes away from the potential dynamism of a gallery wall.
Make it personal
One smart option for a gallery wall is to centre it around a specific theme. This provides the perfect opportunity to infuse your home décor with personal memories and interests. Consider creating a gallery wall with beautiful photographs of your travels, or even items you collected during your trip. You could even compose a family tree-style gallery wall, with photographs from past and present or a colorful drawing your child made at school.
Focus on order
Now that you’ve found yourself with a lot of different styles, it’s important to ensure you find coherency among them rather than confusion. Sailhen typically starts with sketches of how her gallery wall could come together, before placing all the works on the floor. This sparks a fun game of Tetris, moving pieces around until she finds harmony between color, shape and style arrangements. When she’s satisfied with her gallery, she takes a photo so as not to forget everything once the works hit the wall.
Find the right place
This step could come at the beginning or end—depending on where your inspiration lies—but finding the right location for your gallery wall is certainly important. Aligning with this article’s general theme, the choice of location is very personal. Sailhen has seen gallery walls above sofas in living rooms, above beds in bedrooms, even impressive gallery walls in bathrooms!
