The easiest way to build a gallery wall in your home

Okay – so I am NO home interior expert, at all, but I am pretty damn proud of how this gallery wall turned out. I thought I could share how we did this, what we used, and some tips & tricks that I learned along the way. It took me about a week to figure out the best way to do this, so I thought I’d help you skip the research and use these tips – if you like how it turned out, of course!

We had a huge, blank 100in x 100in wall in our living room and putting a gallery of my favorite photos up was the clear answer for covering this white space. I’m so glad we did because the completed gallery makes the space look so much larger!

Here is your list of supplies:

Ribba FramesThese frames also come in a few different sizes and colors.

PS: You can now order online from ikea and pick up! This is super convenient if you know exactly what you want but don’t want to walk through the entire store, go find on the shelves, pay, and then cart out to your car. I can’t recommend the curbside pick up enough!

Nails for Hanging

Tape Measure

Any kind of tape for marking angles and where photos will go.

9 printed photos that are 11.5 x 11.5

Let’s stop and talk about the printed photos real quick, as this was 100% the hardest part of this process. I decided to have my photos printed at our local UPS store. I called to make sure they could print this size of photo and the guy working told me yes, I could email them in digital files to the store, and he’d take a look. Make sure when you are sending the digital files that you are sending them as “actual size” in your email. It might take a few emails but this is how you guarantee they won’t be pixelated. Make sure that you are sending photos of good quality (I suggest choosing professionally taken photos, if possible.) Make sure you are doing your best to “crop” to a square size image if you are using square frames. They will likely still have to adjust the images but there will be less room for error if the photos are sent with square dimensions. The UPS store did have me come in to check the edits they had made on the photos before printing. This was an extra step but I’m so glad he let me help and provide my input. I fear if I would’ve just sent to the drugstore for prints, I wouldn’t have had this kind of customer service. He also told me that when researching what to charge for these type of prints, the cheapest they found was Walgreens and they charge about $2/print less.

How-to

Step One: put printed photos into frames. You’ll need to tape the photo to the mat so that it is centered and hangs correctly.

Step Two: lay out frames on the floor and arrange which image you want, where.

Step Three: Decide how much of the wall you want to cover. This will help determine spacing between each frame. We wanted to cover a 72in x 72in square. Between the size of the frames and even spacing, this puts almost exactly 5 inches between each frame on top and bottom (since they are even squares.)

Step Four: mark off the top and bottom edge of 72 x 72 on your wall with tape.

Step Five: start with the bottom left frame. Mark with tape where it’ll go. The hardest part of hanging was measure where the nail hanger is on the frame, so you’ll have to measure that too. For example, the nail needed to be exactly 4.5in down from where the top of the frame would be, and 10.25in in from the side. This definitely takes two people to hold, eye, and measure at the same time!

Step Six: Start hanging! Once the first frame is up, the next one will be either 5 inches above, or 5 inches to the side of the one you just hung.

Step Seven: Have a glass of wine ready, lol! This can be hard to do, and quite the project!

Step Eight: Admire your work! Craig even said at the end how great of an idea this was and how much he loves the final product!

Let me know if you decide to try this project! Tag me, message me, etc – I’d love to see!!

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