When buying your first home, you may not have all the pictures or artwork for your house. It could take you years or decades to find the right photos to display. Or, you may give up altogether and not put anything on your walls. For us, the best time to rearrange our artwork and pictures was when we got crown molding installed in our main living areas.
I placed all the prints and artwork together, and surprisingly enough we found a theme for each of the piles of artwork and pictures. With my parents passing and our collection of photographs, we had amassed many prints with a faith and family topic. Since we couldn't fit both of them on one wall, we decided to separate them on the two walls. Our two-story wall space gave us enough room to spread out the prints and allow some negative space and color of the wall to come through.
Below are examples of topics for arranging pictures in your home.
A faith wall - this arrangement would include all your religious pieces.
A wedding wall - this collection would hold all the wedding photos of your ancestors over the years.
A family wall - An arrangement of all the family photos you collected over the years.
A flower wall - If you love pictures of flowers or nature, you can make a wall with all that artwork.
A reunion wall - this wall could hold all the pictures over the years from your family reunions.
Your favorite hobby - A collection of your favorite pieces of artwork you created yourself or a family member created.
By determining a theme for your wall, it will make it easier for you to decide what will go on the wall.
You may wonder why to create a theme. There are lots of benefits on doing this instead of slapping up any old artwork or picture frame on the wall.
Benefits of creating a picture frame theme wall
- The artwork is off the floor and gives purpose to a wall.
- It allows you to see all your favorite pieces all in one place.
- The collection gives you ideas on what other items you can add to the wall that you may have in another room.
Are you ready to take action? Decide the theme and let's begin.
Now that you decided on a theme for your wall, gather all the framed pictures and artwork for that theme. Since the wall may be large, you can use sheets of paper cut out to the size of each print and tape them to the wall. This step is handy to see how all the photographs would layout in the process. Visit my living room collection post to see a visual of this tip.
After you do this, now it is time to add the prints to the wall. Go one by one and remove the paper behind the wall and add the picture hook and print.
Walla, you are finished! What do you think of your very own customized picture wall? Please share your results in the comments below.
I mentioned I did this with my walls, the below images are how we created our collection of artwork and picture frames for our walls.
Here is my Faith wall. It is the west wall of my staircase. I found the cross at a discount store and the word Faith came from another quote pack Faith Hope Love from a rub-on sticker for walls.
The photo above is what I call my family wall. It's the east wall of my staircase. We had large pictures of my parents and wanted to put all our other photos around them. I love it!
Hanging the photos and prints took time. So, expect it to take a good day or so to do all of these steps. If you have a high wall, you may need a ladder and a helper to hand you the artwork also. Our project took a total of 3 hours.
Tips for hanging picture frame collections:
If you decide to gather your photos together, a common theme will emerge. Determine what that theme is, what wall will be able to hold the collection and go with it. When I gathered all my prints together, I realized I liked the cherry and gold frames, relationship prints, colorful prints, and plates, as you can tell.
If you find that your frames do not work well together, grab spray paint and change the frame color to make it work better. There are several sets of frames you can buy. For your convenience, I added some I found on Amazon (affiliate).
Now, are you ready to take all those piles of pictures and artwork off the floor and display them in a place of honor? I hope this inspires you to create your very own customized collage wall of your favorite framed photos. Read more about the collage process below and check out my other wall to get even more inspired. The capital titles below are from this blog.
4 Steps to Perfectly Decorated Walls
How to Arrange Pictures on a wall
HOW TO MAKE A FABULOUS PHOTO WALL COLLAGE
ARRANGING PHOTOS ON WALLS TIPS
Andi Willis
I just added a family wall of black and white photos of all of the couples in my family tree. My husband and I, our parents, grandparents and great-grandparents. It makes me smile every day! Thanks for the tips.
Sabrina Quairoli
I love family walls. Thanks for stopping by and commenting.
Sarah Soboleski
Some great tips here! I love that you incorporated some plates into the wall. I'm currently working on a plate wall for my dining room. 🙂
Janet Barclay
I really like your suggestion to paint the frames to match. Believe it or not, I never thought of doing that!
Sabrina Quairoli
These days spray paint with primer covers everything, even plastic. It's lots of fun.
Seana Turner
I love the idea of having a "theme" to the wall. I've seen family galleries before, but your other ideas are new to me. This does take a bit of time to make it look right. If you tape the pieces of paper up, remember to use painter's tape, right? I've also heard - but never tried- the tip of putting a bit of toothpaste on the back of the photos where the hook would attach and gently pressing that into place on the wall so you know just where hammer!
Sabrina Quairoli
Oh, of course. use tape that will not damage the wall. Thanks for mentioning this. The toothpaste idea is interesting. I never tried that either. Thanks for mentioning this tip.