Modernize Your Cluttered Gallery Wall With This Fresh Layout

Gallery walls can be a great way to display a wider selection of art in your home. A well-designed gallery gives you the chance to create a grouping that not only fills up a larger portion of any big blank wall, but also adds personality, charm, and visual interest. The look of a gallery wall tends to accompany more maximalist design aesthetics, since, in a more minimalist space, the various pieces and frames can appear overly cluttered and weighty compared to a single larger piece of art. Designers, however, are praising a fresh solution that offers perhaps the best of both worlds. Grid walls, which are more symmetrical and uniform than traditional gallery walls, offer a chance to display multiple pieces while, at the same time, appearing cleaner, modern, and more sophisticated.

This symmetry and uniformity lends itself well to more minimalist-influenced spaces, as well as smaller rooms, where a gallery wall can make your room look even smaller. It can also be a great chance to modernize an outdated large gallery wall. With other types of gallery walls, your eyes take in the whole of the display, but many believe that the uniformity of frames and matting in a grid wall can give extra focus to what is inside the frames rather than the frames themselves.

The visual simplicity of this approach lies in identical frames and matting across the entire segment of wall. This provides a more uniform look to whatever is housed in the frames, looking far more orderly than a more eclectic gallery wall installation. While assembling a gallery wall this way can be more expensive, requiring multiple frames in the same material and design, the effect is less cluttered and more pleasing to the eye. This can benefit a more modern or minimalist space. The frames can be placed side by side in equal length rows or with an equal distance between each edge. The space you allot to the installation and the size of frames will determine how many frames you need, as well as how many rows to hang both vertically and horizontally.

Measurement and precision is much more important when hanging this arrangement, so your tape measure and level are key to get the exact amount of space between each frame for a gallery-perfect hang. You may also want to lay out your frames on the floor first to get the layout just right. You can use elements like picture wires or a picture rail to create uniformity in distance and placement. The good news is that once the frames are in place, it's easy to switch out the contents with new artwork or photos without having to measure and rehang the whole thing again. Fill your frame grid with the same sort of materials as you would with a traditional gallery wall, like family photos, artwork, prints, ephemera, maps, botanical illustrations, or dried flowers and leaves.

While some might see the uniformity as a limit to creativity, this approach actually allows a lot of personalization in the contents of the frames. This can provide a berth for different pieces in multiple mediums or sizes, that will still look very cohesive in their identical frames. You also have some freedom to get creative in matting and backgrounds, which you could switch up with an array of colors and still look very unified and coordinated. Switching out multiple style frames for the same design can also calm a busy gallery wall in a space with a lot going on.

If you like the idea of a grid, but still want a little more visual interest, get creative with your frames, like a cool arrangement of decoupaged frames holding small snapshots that form a whole image around their edges when assembled together.. While this style of frame wall prizes symmetry, you could also hang a series of identical frames in a triangular or stair-step arrangement that can draw the eye up toward the ceiling.