I love gallery walls. I did the same things; design on the floor first. I didn't meausre exactly so some of the pictures didn't come out as initially intended but still love the look.
Thanks for the post.

Great eye flow.

I always work out the art/photos on the floor first. Better to move them on the floor & not make unnecessary holes in the walls. I also like to leave "room to grow" the wall by not making the far right & left too perfect. This way my client can add to the wall on their own.

Spent the weekend doing this. Completely concur with laying out on the floor. Another thing that worked for us: We determined the width for the gallery, then laid out the farthest right and left pieces first. We then filled in the others and figured out the space between pieces from that. Was not as hard as I thought it would be.

I cut out the shape/size of each picture with scrap paper and use small pins or tape to tack them to the wall with no damage.
You can move around the pictures on the wall as much as your heart desires.
This works well if you don't have the space and you can label the paper outlines and mark where the hanging hardware is if you want.

Who has the floor space for this?

Good one michelleleigh -- Using scrap paper or even cardboard pinned or taped to the wall works much more efficiently. I don't have a big enough space of emptiness on my floors (anywhere) to arrange artwork before hanging, and I really don't know anyone that does, unless they have a loft apartment and no furniture. In my case, the grand piano is usually in the way, and that's a pain to move.

Love it!

I start with large X pattern on the wall then add as I go.

"The left side of any composition can hold more visual weight and feels more comfortable to the eye."
Really? I think asymmetric balance can be created on either the right or the left as well as above or below the geometric midline.

When I recently put up a gallery wall I laid the frames down onto pages of newspaper I had taped together into one large sheet. I then traced the frames and marked the position of the brackets on the sheet. Then I pasted the entire sheet on the wall (painter's tape works) and drilled pilot holes thru the sheet.

My biggest hangup is figuring out what goes together on a gallery wall. Every time I try it it just looks like a few random pieces of art. I'm using fine art photographs and paintings, but I just can't seem to make it happen.

I second (or third) the scrap paper idea. Even if you get the arrangement perfect on the floor, assuming you have the floor space, you don't see the visual weight on the wall in relation to your other walls/furniture. I'm pretty compulsive and just did this with cut up grocery bags, used tape to mimic the frames, and even taped small printouts of the artwork in the center so that I could balance the color. No holes in the wrong places and no rehanging! If I was more tech savvy, I would post a pic...

Wow, I just did this over the weekend. I tried arranging on the floor, but moved to cutting out pieces of newspaper and taping them. It was great using both ways so that I could visualize it pre-nails. I love your art and the arrangement!

This is exactly what we did when we hung a whole bunch of art works on a single wall. LOVE LOVE the look..It's been years since the project but I still admire the beauty every day..=)

Another great point to be made with the scrap paper idea is to mark on the scrap paper the spot where your nail should go (I hold it up against the frame). Once you get the arrangement sorted out, you know exactly where you need to hammer that nail in.

I would rather have the art on the drywalled walls and left the wood alone. Also I would have hung the black and whites totally seperate some where else. Just cause you have it doesn't mean it should or would all go together. Just an opinion.

I also recommend the scrap or kraft paper idea. It has the added benefit that after you trace the frame onto the paper, you can poke a hole or make a mark on the paper where the hanger is. So then once you have everything how you want it on the wall, you can put a nail or a mark right through the paper. This way you don't end up with those 1/16 inch adjustments when you're trying to put the nail or screw in the right spot.

Young House Love did a great explanation a while back of using paper templates to help figure out how to group and hang art while avoiding a lot of agonizing re-hanging, re-nailing, re-measuring and the creation of lots of unneeded nail holes (you know, the kind of thing that makes me put off hanging most of my art!) ...

You can check it out here:
http://www.younghouselove.com/2011/03/the-hallway-full-monty/

I think they've done an update to that as well, but this 2011 tutorial is the one that came up when I did a search on their site.

No disrespect to Alex, but he should read the previous AT articles on gallery wall alignment.

Following the advice previously given here, in my opinion...
The top edge of 9, 10, & 11 should be aligned.
Then 3, 4, 11, 12, & 13 should align vertically along 10's right edge.
Similarly, 5, 6, 8 & 9 should v-align to 10's left edge.
1, 2, & 14 should v-align to 11's right edge.
Finally, 7 v-aligned with 9's left edge.

I've been doing this and making a paper template to hang on the wall for marking. It works very well.

@tinyhands, Alex aligned just enough pieces to make sure the whole wall looks balanced but carefree. If everything aligns as you've described, it would be awkward and forced. Just chiming in as another gallery shop professional, who hangs art this way in her store constantly.

And for those folks complaining about not enough floor space. Sometimes you just have to move things around! The floor arranging is worth it because you see how the actual pieces - the frame, the images, the colors - work to create a balanced wall. (You can see in the photos that they had to move all of the furniture for this installation project.)

What a handsome man XD I love the final result!

If anyone, ANYONE, knows how to hang -- and I mean the actual physical process of locating where to put the nail(s) in the wall (not the "arrangement") to do this sort of thing, please let me know! I have pictures that have hooks and/or wires at varying positions on the frame, and I can NEVER PERFECTLY place the hole to precisely mimic the spacing I want between pictures. As a consequence, I never hang more than two items side by side. Ever.

Please, help this girl understand how to perfectly hang pictures so the spacing between frames is exactly what I intend...

It is this problem that keeps me from ever arranging more than 2 things (and even that can be a challenge when I can't get the intended side by side height right).

Is the solution simpler than I think?

kirstlambert

"The left side of any composition can hold more visual weight and feels more comfortable to the eye."
I was thinking about this comment too. I think that it makes sense if you consider the relationship between the eyes and the brain hemispheres. The left eye is connected to the right hemisphere of the brain where art, creativity, music, holistic though and intuiition are typically preceived.

Previously, I have laid artwork out in Illustrator (to proportion) then, when I liked layout, I cut out/pasted newspaper to size and put them up on the wall. Easy, however, this was with all black and white photography that matched. It wasn't anything with different styles or different colors, etc.

Duh. This is one of those "why didn't I ever think of this before" items...

I use this handy device to hang artwork. Works great. Only flaw is that you can't get to close to the ceiling with it.
Hang & Level Picture Hanging Tool
http://www.homedepot.com/h_d1/N-5yc1v/R-202525725/h_d2/ProductDisplay?catalogId=10053&langId=-1&keyword=Picture+level&storeId=10051#.UP92Mny9KK0

This makes so much sense. You can also work for mood boards and collages.

Where is the calendar/clock near the window from?

Laying the floors down on the floors over extra large gift wrap (if needed taped together) and tracing the templates is the easiest way to go. Made my gallery wall one of the fastest art hanging projects in our home. You can see the steps in detail here.
http://whatsurhomestory.com/gallery-wall-tutorial/

Just did a similar gallery wall at a friends over the weekend and was done in 30 mins.

I mean "Laying the frames down on the floors

@Magoo1-
You can either buy something like the plastic tool recommended by Marie, or you can make your own tool with a paint stir-stick and a screw:
1) Screw the screw through the paint stick about half an inch from either end so that the head sticks out on one side and the point sticks out the other.
2) Hold the stick in one hands and hang the picture from it, with the wire catching the screw-head side of the screw. Let the screw/stick hold the weight of the picture so that the wire stretches to where it would stretch were the screw in the wall.
3) Still holding onto the stick, position the picture where you want it on the wall, horizontally and vertically (it helps to have another person as a spotter), then push lightly on the face of picture so that the point of the screw makes a small indentation/hole in the wall.
4) Gently put everything down and now drive your nail into the hole made by the screw point.

Here's a more detailed description, with pictures-
http://www.viewalongtheway.com/2011/08/frame-hanging-hack-how-to-get-ikea-ribba-frames-to-behave/

This is exactly what i was looking for. I love wall art and have been trying my hands for quite some time over it. Better to move them on the floor & not make unnecessary holes in the walls. Fabulous job.

This of course only works if your room's floor is as wide as it is high. Forget about it in a hallway!

*if the floor is as wide as the room is high, rather...

Awesome Awesome Awesome.

rather than nailing into the wall, you can install a hanging system then change the configuration of pictures to your heart's content. if you're in australia, fx hanging systems have some great inexpensive nylon cord hangers.

I love gallery walls, but have held back on seriously attempting one because the pieces I want to use are a mix of organic and geometric shapes (ex, a small, round, wavy mirror and a rectangular framed picture). I've searched for tips on how to compose a gallery wall with a mix of such elements, but can't find much info. Does anyone have some input?