How to Plan and Hang a Gallery Wall That Actually Works

Sam: Hey everyone, welcome to Interior Design Tips! Today we are talking about gallery walls, and I promise you, by the end of this you will never again hammer a nail into the wrong spot and stand there holding a crooked frame going "close enough."

Dave: I have been that person. Multiple times. I had like eleven nail holes behind one frame because I just kept guessing and kept being wrong.

Sam: See, that's exactly it. Everyone sees a gorgeous gallery wall on someone's Instagram or whatever and thinks it just happened organically. It did not. There's a system.

Dave: Okay so what's your system? Because I feel like everyone has a slightly different approach and half of them involve buying craft paper and I never have craft paper.

Sam: I do use the craft paper method and I will die on this hill. You trace each frame onto paper, cut it out, tape it to the wall with painter's tape. You can move everything around until it looks right before a single nail goes in.

Dave: I get the logic, I just skipped it and paid for it. What I do now, honestly, is I lay everything on the floor first. Like the exact floor space below where the wall will be. Same dimensions, rough layout. Then I take a photo looking straight down.

Sam: Oh that's actually smart. You can zoom in on your phone.

Dave: Right, and you can see the spacing issues immediately. Like I thought I had even gaps and the photo showed one gap that was twice the size of the others. Looked terrible.

Sam: Spacing is everything. I try to keep gaps consistent, usually between two and three inches between frames. Any bigger and it starts to feel like they're just floating and not really talking to each other.

Dave: Yeah and mixing frame sizes matters too. I made the mistake of using all the same size frames once and it looked like a grid. Which is a valid look, but it wasn't what I wanted. I wanted eclectic and I got corporate.

Sam: Corporate gallery wall. I know exactly what you mean. The mix is where it gets interesting. I like having one large anchor piece, maybe sixteen by twenty or bigger, and then building around it. Everything else kind of orbits that one piece.

Dave: And it doesn't all have to be framed art either. I have a small mirror, a little shelf, a ceramic piece on my gallery wall. Adds depth, literally and visually.

Sam: Yes! Dimension is so good. My living room wall has a wooden letter mixed in and people always comment on it.

Dave: Okay the other thing I learned the hard way: hang the heaviest pieces first. I hung a light piece first, loved the placement, and then realized the big heavy piece I needed next to it had nowhere to go because of stud placement.

Sam: Oh studs will humble you fast. For anything over, I'd say, five pounds, you really want a stud or a proper anchor. I use those toggle bolt anchors for drywall and they hold great, but they leave a bigger hole if you move things.

Dave: And you will move things. Accept that going in.

Sam: Always. I think I rearranged my bedroom gallery wall three times before I committed. No shame.

Dave: The paper method would have saved you, just saying.

Sam: Okay fine! Fine, you're right, the paper method and the floor photo method are both valid and we should all just do both and stop suffering.

Dave: There it is. That's the episode.

Sam: That is the episode! Alright, thanks so much for hanging out with us today. Go make something beautiful on your walls.

Dave: Catch you next time!