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How to nail a gallery wall in your own home

"Lots of residences today are small. Instead of scattering postage-stamp-size works of art all over, focus attention and care on one wall and arrange your works of art and collectibles," says Paula Wallace, founder and president of Savannah College of Art and Design.

An Artfully Walls gallery wall from a home in Ann Arbor, Michigan. “It’s not a trend. It’s been around for hundreds of years,” says the owner of an online framing company.
An Artfully Walls gallery wall from a home in Ann Arbor, Michigan. “It’s not a trend. It’s been around for hundreds of years,” says the owner of an online framing company.Read moreMarta X. Perez

Every now and then, a design blog will declare gallery walls “over” — a fad that’s had its moment.

But they’re a decorating staple, says Susan Tynan, founder and chief executive of Framebridge, an online framing company. “I get asked a lot whether I think the gallery wall trend will go away anytime soon,” she says. “It’s not a trend. It’s been around for hundreds of years.”

In 17th-century Paris, the paintings of recent graduates of the Royal Academy were hung floor to ceiling so as many as possible could be viewed, creating a sensation and inspiring grand salon-style museum exhibitions that continue to this day. This arrangement style eventually became popular with collectors and art lovers.

There’s no end in sight. Some of the country’s top designers showed off gallery walls in this year’s high-end Kips Bay Decorator Show House in New York. And for the more timid and budget-strapped among us, experts, online tools, and apps have popped up to help consumers curate artwork — and get over their fear of hammering multiple holes in their walls.

“Gallery walls give a visual wow factor,” says Paula Wallace, founder and president of Savannah College of Art and Design. “Lots of residences today are small. Instead of scattering postage-stamp-size works of art all over, focus attention and care on one wall and arrange your works of art and collectibles. With a salon wall, all rules are out the window. If it pleases you, mix modern and vintage frames, traditional art with contemporary. It’s all fine.”

A gallery wall (or salon wall) is loosely defined as a collection of items: framed artwork, photographs and personal treasures hung in a grouping. Search #gallerywall on Instagram, and you’ll see more than 865,000 incarnations, some hung in millennial-friendly symmetrical rows, some Bohemian assemblages in mismatched frames.

“You see gallery walls all through history, whether in grand estates in Moscow, at Monticello or in Diana Vreeland’s iconic apartment in New York,” says Michelle Adams, editor and creative adviser at Artfully Walls, an online company that sells the work of more than 450 artists reproduced in digital giclee prints and has a collection for Anthropologie. It also sells pre-curated gallery walls you can try on for size with an online tool that shows how they will look in your room.

"We see people mixing in a lot of personal photos, and even wall-hanging plants have become part of the gallery wall today," she says. "They'll even mix in Samsung's Frame TV that looks like a piece of art."

Interior designers say the gallery wall is frequently on clients’ wish lists. “When I start working with someone, I ask them to send me photos of rooms that inspire them,” says designer Miles Redd of the New York firm Redd Kaihoi. “Invariably, they show me that one wall of eclectic art that everybody loves and wants to have.”

There’s no one way to organize a wall. Some gallery walls have the same style frames or all the same color frames; some have artworks that share a theme, such as travel, or a certain shade of chartreuse. Some just reflect the whim of the collector.

"It's a collage you are making, and it's all about relationships," Redd says. "You hold things up, and if it feels good you keep going."

Not sure what is really you? Help is everywhere.

West Elm's Design Crew offers free in-home consultations on how to arrange your wall. Then to install, the store charges $129 for hanging up to 10 pieces of art.

Framebridge started selling framing online in 2014 and started a gallery wall consultation service a year later. For $199, an online Framebridge consultant will help you organize your artwork into a gallery wall and provide one custom layout mock-up and $39 toward your framing order.

Last year, the company launched a predesigned gallery wall collection that includes three to 12 framed photos made from digital pictures customers upload.

“We heard from people that they wanted a very specific look that they’d seen on Instagram and Pinterest,” says Tessa Wolf, Framebridge creative director. Each predesigned gallery wall comes with a life-size template to tape on your wall so you’ll know exactly where to hammer.

Framebridge customized a hallway gallery wall of 14 framed photos for Alexandra Sullivan’s Winchester, Mass., home, using mostly pictures stored in her iPhone. They printed them, framed them, and gave her a layout.

“This hallway is in view from our back stairs, kitchen and front door, so it’s a high-traffic area,” Sullivan says. "It was a great spot to showcase the images that make me happiest — photos of our babies, wedding, honeymoon and dog.”