Joe and I have always loved home decor, but when we started renovating our current home, we became even more obsessed. Maybe even a little too obsessed… if that’s a thing? I only say this because we sometimes focus so much on things looking “perfect”, we struggle to work in the personal pieces. This gallery wall is one solution for us. A way to incorporate our family photos, while also sticking with the decor vibes we work so hard to achieve.
I’ve always been a fan of gallery walls, and I love them in all shapes and sizes. We chose a grid gallery in this space because we were working with such a large wall. It would be tough for us to find enough cohesive pieces to fill the space, not to mention that we both could agree on. We were originally planning on doing a grid gallery wall in our dining room. I think because they feel fancy?? But after WAY too many hours of back and forth conversation between Joe and I, we realized that nothing else would be as good on this wall.
The Picture Frames
The first step was finding the right frame. We landed on 18″x18″ white (linked here), with the intention of using black and white photographs. Side note… It was oddly difficult to find white square frames this large! To fill the wall, we knew we needed 15 frames, so we hunted for the best price possible. The other option we considered was the Ikea frames that I’ve seen a lot of. We landed on these from Target because we found them half off, at $25 a piece. They’re no longer carried at Target, but I found them at Walmart for very close to what we paid, even at full price… go figure.
We didn’t use a ton of strategy for actually hanging the frames. We just decided the distance we liked between the frames (we did two inches), and how far we wanted it off the ground (a few inches above the couch, even though this couch will eventually be replaced). Joe is the one who took all the time to measure out each frame perfectly! He deserves a medal. All I can say is, make sure you have a level and a pencil and measure multiple times before drilling. These frames have two hooks in the back, so Joe had to measure the entire row before drilling, to make sure all 10 holes lined up perfectly.
The Sconce Lighting
Once we had all the frames hung, something was still missing. We loved the look of wall sconces above frames, but we knew that hardwiring wasn’t an option right now. On instagram, we started seeing a bunch of people “fake” lighting with a puck light. It was genius! We bought these lights on Amazon and mounted them to the wall without the wires. (Make sure to get hard wired lights, I believe this is the way it works) These are the puck lights we bought, along with these plug converters. We attached the plug converter to the puck light with command strips (picture below), and then the puck light screwed into the lamp just like a bulb. The puck lights even come with a remote!
Deciding on the Photos
Once the wall was done, we then had to decide which photos to actually put into the frames. I always work better when I can get a visual, so I copied and pasted all the photos into a word doc and played around with the arrangement. There were certain photos that I couldn’t leave out, which is why they aren’t all the same orientation. I placed them in a way that at least looked planned, even if they all couldn’t match. It was also helpful, in general, to see all the photos laid out to be sure all kids were featured equally haha
We couldn’t be happier with how it turned out, and we were able to achieve it with a decently low cost…. Win win!
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