Modern Gallery Wall: How

I’ve been dying to hang a gallery wall ever since we moved into our house… two years ago! When we got around to setting up our toddlers playroom, I KNEW this was my chance and I had to run with it! We wanted to keep it modern, simple and yet still fun for our little guy. Here is what we did to achieve a great look as painlessly as possible.

1. Start with a few statement Peices. I’ve been Oogling this White and Silver Narwhal form White Faux Taxidermy for months.

Our little guy is obsessed with sea creatures so I thought it would be an awesome anchor for the wall.

Our incredibly talented friend, Amanda at Engravables Design can make pretty much anything.. so we decided to commission this mirrored “PLAY” sign and use this as the anchor on the right side of the wall.

2. Choose a color scheme. Because there are already a LOT of bright vibrant colors in this little playroom from toys, we wanted to keep the gallery wall fairly neutral and simple. We stuck to primarily black, white, silver, mirror with a few pops of blue and lighter colors for good measure. Also, because we only have one child at the moment, but are not sure what will happen in the future, we chose a color scheme that was gender neutral. The colors you pick will depend on what is already in the room (in terms of furniture), what the room will be used for, and who will be using the room the most.

3. Play with scale – Vary the size and orientation of the art. You can see that the PLAY sign is quite a bit larger, and the Narwhal on the smaller side. We used mainly vertically oriented rectangular frames, but there are a few square frames and even a horizontally oriented rectangular for good measure.

4. Spacing- Keep at least 1.5″ – 3″ between each piece.

6. Use 2 to 4 styles of frames. This includes color as well. We chose to go with Mirror, Black, White and Silver and we purchased all of them at Chapters Indigo which has 15% off at the moment! SCORE!

7. Use different mediums of art – Its great to mix photography, art prints, gift wrap, decorative objects, etc. As you can see, we REALLY love quotes and prints of quotes! haha. Especially the ones at Chapters Indigo! We chose to break the quotes up with our two statement pieces, the image of animals and also a piece that is incredibly meaningful to us, some hand made artwork from a little boy named Declan.

I met Declan through my involvement with the Kids with Cancer Society. Declan is survivor of childhood cancer, one of the sweetest, most resilient and inspiring individuals we have ever met. We wanted to include Declan’s art not only as a symbol of his strength and determination, but also to remind us how very lucky we are to have our health.

8. Use Command Strips to mount. These things are seriously amazing! They are heavy duty, can hold up to 16 lbs of weight and best of all don’t leave marks on the walls. Finally get that piece up and don’t exactly LOVE where you put it? No worries! By using these strips instead of screws and nails, it is zero hassle to move them! (Huge Thank you to our friend Heather for this killer tip!)

9. Plan it out ahead of time. Lay all your items out on the floor beforehand to make sure your wall is balanced in terms of color, spacing, sizing and orientation. For example, you don’t want all the same colored frames beside each other. In ours, we also wanted to break up the quotation prints. You can also trace each item and tape tracings to wall. Both of these are helpful

10. Keep it SIMPLE. When going for a clean, modern look, less is always more. Hold back on going TOO crazy with gallery wall and putting up 30 different pieces. A Busy gallery wall will actually take away from the purpose and beauty of it . Stick with 8-14 quality items and you wont regret it!

Hope these tips helped! We’d love to see your Gallery Walls! Tag us on instagram or send us a picture to rivercitysisters@gmail.com