My $180 Gallery Wall with a Cheat Sheet!
Hey everyone! Hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving. We went a whole 0.8 miles down the road to my in-laws and enjoyed a very low-key evening, which left our day open to get started on our holiday decorating. We knocked out the outdoor lights on Thanksgiving Day, then were able to begin decorating inside yesterday (Black Friday.) As I was literally decking the halls, I thought it was about time to give a little tutorial on our gallery wall.
We have a split staircase in our house with about a 12′ tall wall at the turnaround. There’s not much landing space for a bench or console so art is about the only option. I could have done one large piece of art, but opted for a gallery wall for a couple of reasons:
1. Semi-private location. It was the perfect spot to showcase family photos where they aren’t too in your face.
2. Budget. I had found these really cheap frames from IKEA. A large format piece of wall art would be a pretty penny.
I wanted to do 9 square frames centered in the wall. For this project centering in the middle of the wall worked because the gallery would be viewed from both downstairs and upstairs. If this were on a standard wall, I’d probably cheat the whole arrangement to be slightly higher and more in line with eye level.
Here is what my super neat measurements look like:
If you plan on doing something similar, here are a couple of ANNOYING BUT REALLY IMPORTANT NOTES about this:
- The X nail mark is only accurate assuming the distance from the top of your frame to the nail hook is the SAME on each frame. Take the time to ensure this on all frames you plan to hang. Especially with IKEA frames, these can differ from frame to frame and make hanging a huge PITA!!!
- Ensure your measurements are from wall to wall. In other words, if you have a baseboard or crown moulding, this can skew your measurements. I made the mistake of measuring the width of my wall on the ground and therefore from baseboard to baseboard. This is fine as long as you add back in the width of the baseboard (mine was about 0.5″ on each side.)
There’s a saying: measure twice cut once. Same applies to something like this, otherwise you’ll end up with 50 nail holes in your wall. Just for fun I tried to build a formula anyone could use to create a gallery wall like this in their own home. Why? Because I’m a NERD. I took Calculus as an elective in college, I’m not kidding. So here’s the math behind the wall:
Okay so you still need to do a little math… Algebra to be exact (I told you I’m a GIANT NERD.) BUT you can apply this to any dimension frame, so long as they are all the same size. They do not have to be square frames. Just plug-in your values for “a,b,c,d,x and y” and solve for your nail placement. Voila! You can also easily raise the whole gallery by adding another value, say “e” to all the height formulas. Easy peasy!
Okay so maybe it’s just easier to measure, BUT personally I will reference this if I do another gallery wall like this one.
If you want to try this project at home, here is what you need and how to do it.
Tools:
Measuring Tape and my Cheat Sheet guide
Ladder
Hammer and Nails
Small and Large Levels
Painter’s Tape
9 IKEA Ribba Frames with pictures (see link)
Mounting Putty (see link, LOVE THIS STUFF)
Directions:
- Measure for a,b,c,d,x, and y. Plug into formulas and solve for height and length (from left) of each nail.
- Mark all the nail points with an X
- Using painter’s tape, create lines both horizontally and vertically connecting all the X marks, like a Tic-Tac-Toe board. Check the painter’s tape lines with a large level and adjust X marks if needed
- Beginning with the middle frame, hang all the pictures
- Again beginning with the middle frame, go back with a small level and to ensure they are straight. Secure with mounting putty.
This whole project took me about 3 hours to complete solo. It is so worth taking the time to ensure everything is measured accurately otherwise anything off-center or crooked kind of kills the aesthetic. And the bang for your buck… my goodness. These frames are $15 each and the prints are $4 each. So for under $200 you can have a beautiful personalized gallery wall that truly looks professionally installed. MAJOR Notes of Charm points right there! Try it at home and tag me! Or maybe just try the Algebra for fun??? 😉
Kristen