Gallery Wall Goals | Creating An Artful Mix
This week we partnered with Desenio.com to create and build our own gallery wall. We choose our breakfast nook. As you can see below, it definitely needed some love. I’ve been living in my house since 2017, but other than moving in my banquette bench from my old house I hadn't done much to this corner.
Before:
As you can see we have some oddly angled walls here but not much color. Because I had painted the whole house a very light neutral gray before I moved in, painting was not on the menu. Color is my jam so the goal was always to mix colorful art and furniture with a neutral base - in other words, the walls. So when we became a #deseniopartner, color was front and center on my wish list. Desenio made it easy with a whole treasure trove of art prints and posters to choose from. I was able to choose frames as well so it became a one-stop shop for guaranteeing that it would be a project I could finish in a day. I was able to select all the prints I loved and to see a mock up of how they would look and feel in a real room.
I initially chose the four prints above and the frames to match. I loved the fact that you don’t have to think about what size frame you need. When you choose your print, you get the option of choosing the size of the print. But you also get a prompt to choose a frame that fits the size of the print you chose. And they have at least 6 different types of frames. I was like a kid in a candy shop.
So I initially curated my selections based on an office space I am working on. But after some thought and a decision to place the gallery wall in the kitchen, I edited some of those selections. My only criteria for choosing the prints I chose was that I would have to love each piece on its own and the subjects had to speak to my love of culture, travel, mood and people or places I adored. Here are the four I chose to include in my gallery wall - use the slider to see them all.
I have quite a few pieces of impactful original art in my home. My design aesthetic allows for a mix of old and new, as well as high and low when I am choosing furniture and decor. Art is no different. Prints and posters are great options to change the color story and/or enhance the mood of a space. I prefer a mix of linear abstracts with an architectural bend and portraiture. The prints I chose are also of a weight and composition that they can stand on their own without the others. So they met my criteria.
I have a quick a simple trick when hanging framed posters and prints and it works every time. I’ll walk you through it and then post the pictorials below. So the first step is to save the poster pages that come in the frames you plan to use and to use those pages to layout your gallery wall on the wall. They are the exact size of the print you should be replacing it with. Step two - turn the frame over on the back side then measure from the top of the frame to the hanging apparatus on the back of the frame that you plan to hang the frame on. Step three - measure directly on the posters pages that you laid out on your gallery wall, from the top of the posters down to the exact spot where the hanging apparatus would be on the back of the frame.
So if that measurement was 3 inches, you would measure 3 inches from the top of the poster on the wall. Step four - nail your picture hanger hook on the poster page while it is still on the wall. Then do a test by hanging the frame over the poster on the wall to make sure you measured right and that the frame will hang exactly where you want it to hang. Step five - simply tear the poster page from the wall without ripping out the picture hanging hook. And voila, you are now ready to hang all of your prints to the gallery wall without having to create a separate static line from which to measure frames being hung at various heights.
This was by far the easiest gallery wall to compose and it came together quickly. My kind of DIY home project. As you can see, my print choices changed so that I could include these fabulous portrait prints that gave me Mewd and playfulness. My kitchen has darker tones so I wanted something with color that would also complement the wood tones as well as provide some contrast with the lighter banquette seating in the space. These prints provided a sense of culture, mood, architecture, color and linear abstraction. And as you will see in the after photo below, the original art ( by @natalieodecor) I chose for the wall opposite the gallery wall ties the whole corner together to create a moment that draws you into the nook.
After
There’s a quasi-bohemian mix of pinks, blues and ochre that will surely give us color and light throughout the long Chicago winter months. So my advice to you is to first select prints and art that you love separately and grouped together. Mix up your frames as I did here. Did you see that copper frame in the mix? Make it fun, capture a mood or sense of culture and place. From there, the mix is what you make it. So make it artfully yours.
Desenio is a partner of Joyful Designs Studio. This blog contains links in partnership with Desenio.com. The prints from left to right as referenced in this post are linked here:
Pssst! There’s a huge sale going on this weekend (30-50% off!). Have you seen the botanical prints? Check them out (HERE).
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Joyfully Designed is a blog written and produced by Joyful Designs®️Studio. All rights reserved.