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Re-Thinking the Gallery Wall: 10 Funky New Ideas

Nancy Mitchell
Nancy Mitchell
As a Senior Writer at Apartment Therapy, Nancy splits her time among looking at beautiful pictures, writing about design, and photographing stylish apartments in and around NYC. It’s not a bad gig.
published Jan 14, 2013
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You’ve seen them in our Apartment Therapy House Tours and all over the blogosphere. When it comes to decorating, clustering pictures is trés chic. And it’s really no surprise; a gallery wall adds a nice bit of texture to a room and is a great way to make a big visual statement without splurging on a huge piece of art. But what if you want to take your arrangement a little beyond just a few frames hanging on a wall? Here are 10 stylish and novel ideas for creating a gallery wall.

(Image credit: Apartment Therapy)

TOP ROW:
1. From Architectural Digest, this is a more permanent, but really fascinating, take on a gallery wall, sort of a hybrid of a gallery wall and a shadow box. Spaces for each piece of art are built out from the wall and covered in glass, which makes this a great place to store little tchotchkes and objects d’art as well, safe from dust and little hands.
2. Instead of leaving space between frames, try grouping them right next to each other. This particular arrangement is interesting, monolithic, even a bit sculptural. Photo by Debi Treloar via Poppytalk.
3. I love this art-on-art look from The Selby. A patterned wallpaper or ethnic textile behind framed art creates a fascinating texture.
4. In this living room from Rue, the the diamond pattern forms a sort of raison d’etre for the arrangement of the gallery wall; like in the previous image, the pattern brings the pictures into a textural whole, rather than letting them be the center of attention.
5. Washi tape picture frames make for a lovely, informal, and super-affordable take on the gallery wall. Image from Design*Sponge.

BOTTOM ROW:
6. Turn it around! Add swords and crucifixes. Instant drama. Image from Design*Sponge.
7. From Brooklyn Bride: in lieu of paintings or prints, a gallery wall of favorite objects, hung on the wall and framed.
8. Lovely and informal, with frames within frames. From Hus & Hem.
9. On Project Nursery, a gallery of frames on a chalkboard-painted wall mixes hand doodles and art. I love the tremendous flexibility this setup provides; if you get bored easily, you can change things around to suit your mood.
10. Try oversize frames, all the same size, blocked together for an architectural look. Image from Architectural Digest.

(Images: as linked above)

 

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