How To Make A Gallery Wall

When I shared a tour of my home office, I promised you guys a detailed post all about the gallery wall featured above my desk! If you are looking for ways to organize your home office or room in your house, this is a fun idea to do at home. Here is how to make a gallery wall!

I knew I wanted a gallery wall somewhere in our house and our home office seemed like the perfect space since it’s a place I can be found every single day of the week. I was excited to fill the frames with pictures and mementos that mean something to me and would make me smile whenever I look at the gallery wall.

How to Make a Gallery Wall

When I first had the idea to put a gallery wall above my desk, I turned to Pinterest and found no shortage of gallery wall inspiration. There were large and small gallery walls. Uniform gallery walls and gallery walls that were made with a myriad of frames and colorful pictures. Pinterest always has a billion ideas, that’s for sure! (There are also tons of gallery wall tutorials on Pinterest as well, so check them out if this one confuses you or doesn’t seem to be what you’re looking for in your home.)

I found myself almost immediately gravitating toward a cohesive look that used frames that looked alike but with different sizing. Chelsea’s blog inspired me to head to IKEA to browse their frame selection and I stumbled upon their Virserum and Ribba frames (<—the same frames Chelsea used in her gallery wall).

(Ribba Frames)

Thankfully I visited the store early on a Friday morning so it was practically empty and I was able to lay the frames out on the ground to see how they looked together. I ended up preferring the sturdier look of the Virserum frames and started to play around with the layout.

I rearranged them numerous times but mostly followed a pattern I saw on display at IKEA.

I left with Virserum frames in the following sizes:

• 5 x 7” (3)
• 4 x 6” (5)
• 7 3/4 x 9 3/4” (4)
• 15 x 11” (2)

Everything was under $85!

Once I arrived home, I filled the frames (this took longer than expected!) and arranged them on my home office floor to examine the layout again.

Every online gallery wall tutorial I read encouraged people to outline the frames and cut out the shapes to mount on the wall to make sure you like the way the gallery wall looks before you start hammering nails into the wall. I took this advice to heart and used painter’s tape to place everything on the wall.

I’m glad I did this, because I ended up moving everything around a bit!

My mom was in town when the gallery wall madness was in full swing and since she had experience hanging her own gallery wall at my parents’ place, she definitely helped with everything! She wrote down the measurements of where the nails needed to go on each paper that was on the wall.

For example, on the above paper, I had to hammer in a nail 6 1/8’’ in and 1 3/4’’ down. This made everything flow seamlessly and I could hammer right through the paper and pull it off the wall. I never messed up a nail once thanks to my mom’s precise measurements. She’s a rockstar!

I also made sure to remove the “stander” thing on the back of the frames that allow them to stand up on their own. (I’m sure there’s a technical name for that part of a frame, but it’s not coming to mind at the moment.)

I skipped that step at first and the frames didn’t sit flush against the wall. I was quite happy when they just popped off without much effort. (An added bonus of using cheap frames!)

I’m not married to the pictures I currently have framed and I’m sure I’ll change things out over time, but so far I have the following items framed:

• Map of Orlando (where Ryan and I met, got engaged and lived together right after we got married)
• Beautiful picture of Sadie from an amazingly talented blog reader
• Three prints I made in PicMonkey (one says “Life Doesn’t Have To Be Perfect To Be Wonderful,” another is a list of places Ryan and I have lived in different fun fonts and the small one on the far right says “This is the day the Lord has made; Let us rejoice and be glad in it” which was the psalm our pastor in Ocala would use to open each service)
• Front of a cute card from my friend Carrie featuring an old-fashioned picture of four girlfriends
• A collection of black and white photo booth pictures from over the years
• Our wedding date framed on a piece of pretty mint green faux-lace wrapping paper
• Photo of Macchu Picchu from our family vacation
• Photo of The Bridge of Lions in St. Augustine
• Three black and white wedding photos: Me + Ryan, Leslie + Ross, My parents
• Postcard from Wanderlust that reads “May You Continue To Shine”

And that’s it! The gallery wall was such a fun project and one I am sure I’ll change around over the years but for now, I think it adds a nice personal touch to our home office!