An Exhibit in Your Home: Setting Up An Impeccable Gallery Wall

Spruce up the art in your home by hanging them together in one place.

Over the quarantine, you have most likely rearranged furniture, redecorated, and restyled your home. While you may have bought new pieces—including artworks—to bring a different energy to your space, hanging them in a different way can do additional magic. Bringing pieces together creates a way for artworks to interact with one another, further eliciting a creative, refreshing sight for you, especially if you are working from home. If you are planning to create one, here is how you should do it.

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Naghihintay ng Kanyang Mahal.
Romulo Galicano (b. 1945)
signed and dated 1987 (lower right)
oil on canvas
30” x 40” (76 cm x 102 cm)
(Photo from Leon Gallery website)

Curate pieces

In curating pieces, consider which room you plan to hang your gallery wall. If it is in your living room, you may want to select artworks that elicit conversations. If you have guests over, the beauty and the subject matter of the art can be injected into your discussions. You can choose a certain genre you like, a subject, or an advocacy you are passionate about. If you plan on hanging the gallery in your bedroom, you can choose pieces that you would love to see all the time. This is your personal space and thus, artworks must bring you a sense of happiness or comfort at the very least.

(Photo from Real Simple)

Mix colors, styles, and medium

When people are collecting objects, it is natural for us to follow a certain order or pattern. However, for gallery walls, you don’t have to keep pieces with similar colors and mediums together. Oftentimes, a mixture of works creates organic wonder. There is a serendipitous moment in gathering different textures, mediums, and sizes and discovering they bring a refreshing energy and sight to your home. As much as possible, reduce matching the artworks with the decor of your house as well. Otherwise, your gallery would become too artificial or too forced.

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((Photo from San Diego Home)

Compose the layout

Before hanging your selected artworks, plan the layout first. Lay each frame on the floor and evaluate how would you want the gallery to look like. The first part is to consider the space from each frame. It’s your choice to have it as slim as five inches or as wide as 12 inches apart—it all depends on the space of your wall.

If you have different sizes of the art, then think about each one’s position such that one side wouldn’t look too heavy or too bare on the eye. Remember to balance the sizes and colors. For the latter, you wouldn’t have to mind it so much if you are going for a gradient look on your gallery—light hues on top crawling down to heavier, darker tones at the bottom.

(Photo from The Financial Diet)

Build the gallery

Once you are done with the final layout, make sure to research first the material of the wall. Different wall types require different fixtures so the hanging artworks would last. If you are uncertain, then calling for professional help is always the best choice. However, if you still want to do it yourself, then start by marking the wall with the position of each frame. You can do so by using a pencil or sticking a piece of paper with the label of the artwork. This reduces the possibility of mistakes. Keep in mind the space between each work as you begin with the central bottom frame and then work outwards.

If you want to be eclectic, you can have the works framed in creative shapes. In this way, you wouldn’t have to concern yourself much over the strict alignment. Apart from this, you are certain to add youthful energy to your gallery wall.

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