The Gallery Wall Style That’s Over the Top (in the Very Best Way)

Gallery walls are lovely to look at, but a good floor-to-ceiling scene can actually be a game changer for your home. Not only are they artful, beautiful and unique to your personal style, a well-designed wall-height display can turn just about any humdrum room into an impactful—not to mention one-of-kind—space.

If you’re searching for a way to make your dining room feel less formal, try forging a colorful, full-length gallery wall of playful art to lighten the vibe. Draw from the hues of the artwork to find some complimentary chairs and fixtures and soon you’ll have a bold space with a tailored look.

Above: Find yourself scrambling to make your artwork stretch across a full wall? Your gallery scene needn’t be limited to just framed pieces. Sea of Shoes was clever to include decorative artifacts—think graphic plates and hanging busts—and other found objects to create a stunning mixed media display.

The best salon-inspired wall displays are ones that offer a variety of visuals in various sizes, but it’s important to always have an anchor. To help navigate your own wall-length endeavor, choose a larger piece of artwork to create a center focal point and add to the collection from there.

Above: A floor-to-ceiling art wall can be incredibly commanding (usually in the best way possible), but sometimes, you don’t want to distract from your other furnishings in the room, right? A corner filled with portraits, vacation photos and landscapes creates a compelling scene, and yet doesn’t take away from any additional decor items in the vicinity. (Because if we had an antique bentwood rocking chair like the one in this room from Elle Decoration, we wouldn’t want to steal its thunder, either!)

For a more subdued art display, install floor-to-ceiling picture ledges (painted the same color as your wall) to simply lean your frames against—no hanging necessary. For an even softer style, stick with monochromatic works (i.e. black-and-white photos or line drawings like the ones seen here from Stylizimo’s Instagram) for a low-key look.

If you’re still growing your collection and not working with a ton of artwork, use just a sliver of a large wall to focus your floor-to-ceiling gallery scene instead. Whether hung perfectly straight or diagonally, it’s a small spectacle that still creates a major impact.

A long, empty hallway is prime real estate for a wall-length art display, so just grab all those prints and photos you didn’t know what to do with and get to hanging! Keep all the frames the same for a super pulled together look, or just have at it with a wide variety like Maggie Overby Studios did above. (Bonus points: you can barely even notice the air return grill!)

You don’t need a monolithic room to make an especially dramatic exhibit: work with the space you have and integrate shelves, bookcases and any other ledges for a framed floor-to-ceiling scene. Not only does it allow you to lean some of your heavier pieces against the wall, you can incorporate whatever non-hanging objects into the display you wish.

Looking to forge a more intimate floor-to-ceiling gallery wall? Consider a wall-length bathroom display to make an unexpectedly striking statement in a truly personal space. A powder room tends to work best as there is less moisture (read: no shower) which will preserve your artwork better.

Wherever you assemble it, a well-planned gallery wall can transform even the emptiest of corners in larger rooms into full-blown masterpieces.