LOCATION: PALO ALTO, CALIFORNIA • MAY 1st, 2020
Outfit Details: Sezane Top, J.Crew Pants, Ferragamo Heels, Miansai Cuff Bracelet
When we moved into our apartment in Palo Alto, I knew immediately that I wanted to create a grand gallery wall as a focal point in our new home. Since our entryway, living room, and dining room are all one continuous space, it was important to me to create some resemblance of sections using our furniture. It’s no secret that Danny and I are huge Marvel and Star Wars fans (hello Disney +) so we spend quite a bit of time watching movies together. Since the TV takes up a lot of space in our tiny living room, rather than try and hide it, I wanted to incorporate it into the décor!
There are no hard rules when it comes to building the perfect wall. It simply takes time to collect things you love and a little bit of massaging to get all of the pieces to fit together. There are a lot of art services out there that offer “pre-curated” gallery walls, but I find that I usually don’t love every piece. A personal rule of mine was that I had to love each art piece for the piece itself, beyond how it fit into the gallery wall. I wanted it all to be something I will carry from home to home.
Art, left to right: Guide to New York, Days in Paris, Otto - Woodblock Print,
Fig Print, Press for Champagne (silent version here), New York Door Drawing, Close Print
Creating the Gallery Wall in PowerPoint
This is the step-by-step guide of how I created my gallery wall from start to finish and the following will contain some screenshots where I show you my process. I found using PowerPoint for PC was the easiest way to visualize how the pieces will look once they are hung together.
1. Starting with a blank page, mock up your space using a 1:1 (inches to feet) conversion. Make sure to get the page size right with how high your ceiling is. Our ladder shelves are Crate & Barrel and the TV console is Ikea so I copy + pasted similar items to the slide. Remember to include anything you can’t move (grrrr thermostat).
2. Finding Art – Save anything that catches your eye and speaks to you either aesthetically and sentimentally; copy + paste them to your next blank slide. Don’t worry about whether it matches or not right now. Think of places you have traveled to and loved or art that speaks to a hobby. Remember to include art you might already have in your home (find the picture online or upload a photo from your phone).
a. Inspiration: I used artists that I love as inspiration like Rodin, Degas, and Ellsworth Kelly and then found pieces that invoked feelings of their work.
b. Mixed Media: I also challenge you to include items that are not framed art – like this wool & tassel wall hanging or these hanging baskets. You can also use a canvas piece or something with an ornate frame.
c. Online Sources: Some of my favorite absolute places to find art include Minted, One Kings Lane, Anthropologie Home, and McGee & Co.
3. Selecting Your Art - Start rearranging your art onto the first slide of your mock up. Having pieces you already love and know you want is the easiest starting point since it gives you something to build off of. New York City holds a special place in both of our hearts so when I saw this “My Guide To New York” map, I knew instantly it would become my anchor piece. Consider the following as you play around with the configuration. Remember to “overlap” your art with your TV since you want it to feel like it is apart of the collage!
a. Cohesive Pallet – I chose to go with black, white, and neutrals with a pop of gold. It’s ideal to have an array of different shades of the colors you choose so things don’t look too matchy-matchy.
b. Different Orientations and non-traditional art pieces – the key to having a successful gallery wall is having a mixture of shapes and textures. This is why I think it’s important to have a piece of non-framed art. It elevates your gallery wall and really gives it that pop. I choose to go with this “Press for Champagne” piece and yes, the bell really does ring!!!
c. Different colored frames – three of the pieces I had picked out were pre-framed so I had to choose what colors I wanted for the rest. Originally, I really wanted the “Guide to New York” framed in black, but it didn’t fit well here since that TV is black so the color ends up dominating the space. Companies like Minted offer framing and mounting options to pair with your art so you don’t have to go to the frame store yourself. Remember to include frame size estimates into your PowerPoint.
4. Putting together your wall – As the saying goes “measure twice, cut once.” This is absolutely true for hanging art! Cut brown paper (or wrapping paper) out into the shapes of your frames and hang those first so you can mark where the nails will go. I can’t stress this enough. Luckily you don’t have to play with the layout since you already did that in PowerPoint!
5. Other thoughts – As you can see in my original selection of art, I had a lot of pink and feminine art pieces. Since this was a shared space of D and mine, it was important to me that the gallery wall reflected us, so I shifted away from those pieces. That’s not to say that I won’t purchase them for my home office or put them somewhere else.
I hope you found this post helpful and inspirational. Feel free to leave your questions and comments below!
XO,
Tiffany
