Creating a Family Gallery Wall

Because my husband and I have gone through some major life events together now, I thought it would be nice to put together a family gallery wall in our stairwell. This actually required quite a bit of forethought and planning as a gallery wall can get really messy really quickly.

I would categorize gallery walls into two categories, grid-like with same frames and same size, or organic with frame themes in different sizes. I like varying my frames up so I chose the latter option, which meant I needed to figure out what style, colors, and sizes I needed.

I ended up going with a classic black and gold theme, mostly because I knew I would find plenty of frames in that color scheme. The goal was to have two major focal points (so two large frames), some medium size frames, and smaller frames to fill in.

Many people will cut out paper to the sizes of the frame and tape them on the wall to visually get a feel. I actually made a small scale drawing on paper, and cut out post-it notes to scale for the frames. I liked the post it notes because it was easy to rearrange them on the paper. I also gave my post it notes black borders, gold borders, and black and gold borders…because I’m extra but also wanted to makes sure the composition of the colors was to my liking.

This was the layout I came up with, and as you can see I laid it on my bed to make sure I liked it as well. I got my frames from a variety of places, some were leftover moulding from the custom frame shop I occasionally work at (if you want a guide on how to cheaply “custom” frame your artwork, check out my post about that here), some were from target and amazon, and some from thrift stores.

The photos I chose were major events in our life, like our wedding, my first pregnancy, Celeste’s birth, as well as family photos from our childhood and also kitten photos of the cats (just for fun).

As you can see, I actually had to move a few things around because I didn’t like it up on the wall. That goes to show you that even if you have a plan, it might not always happen. In this case I remained flexible and tried a few options until I liked it. I think I even have room for more frames as our family grows!

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