Our Living Room Gallery Wall

I can't even adequately express how excited I am about this post! On Friday, after Frank and I celebrated our 1-year wedding anniversary in Princeton, we came home and worked on a project I've been wanting to do for what seems like months! I've had the frames laying on the floor in different patterns waiting for pictures and a time to put them up. On Friday afternoon I finally had the chance to have the pictures printed that we had selected and I couldn't wait to have Frank help me put them all up.

This picture above is how we originally planned the gallery to look. And then, we found a large picture of a famous lighthouse during a hurricane that Frank had in his room as a kid. It's something special that we've been wanting to use someplace and it dawned on us at the last minute that it would totally add great impact being so large. 

So, first we laid out the pictures on the floor the way we wanted them and did a lot of math to measure all the distances. First I measured the width of the couch and the width of the gallery we set up. I figured out the middle of both and decided to figure out the biggest picture's placement first to work around it for the rest.

I worked it all out on a piece of paper first. Clearly I am no mathematician and definitely used a calculator. And as you'll notice, it was definitely 9:30 when we started this project. The whole thing took us about 45 minutes to complete. 

After we figured out the measurements, we made pencil marks on the wall as borderlines for our gallery. We started with the biggest picture first. Since it was the heaviest, we used screws to hang it. Then, we added the two smaller pictures beneath it. For those we used command strips. The instructions on the package says you only need one set per frame, but since they'll be above our heads when sitting on the couch we played it safe and used two sets for each frame. 

Then, we put the next largest picture, which we used four sets of command strips to hold up, at the bottom right. We made sure it lined up with the outer edge of the gallery wall we previously measured and centered it making sure to line up with the bottom of the white photo on the bottom left corner. Then, we added the last two frames, each with two sets of command strips, to the top and stepped back to admire our work!

It was definitely worth the wait, all the measuring and leveling! I love the way it fills up what once was a large empty white wall. I'm also so happy we found that large lighthouse picture. It really balances the whole gallery well and fills up so much more space than it would have otherwise. There's also still room on either side for us to add to the gallery if we collect more pictures over time. I just love the way it looks!

So, what do you think? Doesn't it totally bring in the blues of the pillows and color scheme I selected? Plus, we went with an ocean theme with a few photos we took on vacations and one of our wedding photos on a bridge. It's meaningful and adds an extra finished, cozy feel to the space. I'm in love.

Question of the day: Do you have a gallery wall in your home? If not, would you ever create one?