Gallery Walls
As a parent, we all know the familiar bittersweet feeling of trying to capture the fleeting but beautiful family moments that are either spontaneous (sometimes the best kind!) or well-planned. I’m sure we can all agree, though, that photos capture those moments so well and therefore are so priceless. What better way, then, to cherish them then by creating a gallery wall of family photos?
From the time our boys were very young, I knew I wanted to create a black and white gallery wall in a transition space in our house. At the time, we lived in west Africa and that space would have the hallway of our new-build apartment that led to the bedrooms. I wanted small and many black and white frames that would be scattered in an interesting way on both sides of the hallway. Anyhow, due to difficulties finding the right supplies there to undertake the project and the fact that we soon moved overseas to Toronto after that, we never fully realized that project there.. which is a good thing because I revamped the idea in Toronto!
After searching through Pinterest and finding a few ideas that I really liked (and by few, I mean far and few which is why I’ve created this blog post!). My husband and I agreed that large black and white photos, placed in thin black frames with white mats was the look we were going for: timeless and chic. A word on large wall-mounted frames: they are not cheap, so when you want to purchase thirty frames or more, combined with the cost of printing good-quality photos (and possibly hiring someone to hang the frames up) the costs can quickly add up. And as stunning as a gallery wall can be, we didn’t want to spend a shocking dollar amount on it. So we happily settled on Ikea Ribba frames. To shop these frames, click here.
I can happily say the gallery wall turned out beautiful. It is just to the right of the foyer, along the staircase wall and visitors always admire it for a good amount of time when visit for the first time. And there is alot to take it: what looks like an endless amount of photos of our two boys and different ages of their young childhood. Some photos are silly, some are adorable and others are purely sentimental, like the photo of me holding my eldest son in my arms at the hospital on the day he was born.
One of the questions we get asked ALL the time is: what kind of camera did you take the photos with? Jaws drop when we say they are all (yes, every last of them) were taken with an Iphone camera (and most of them were taken at least four or five years ago, so the camera was in no means sophisticated like those of the latest generation of Iphones. We are also not professional photographers and we don’t spend hours taken the perfect shot - the fanciest move we probably did was zoom in!) so yes, you can buy all means use your phone camera.
Here is a breakdown for putting together a gallery wall when all the frames are identical in size:
Download your photos to your computer
Select the photos you would like to print (make sure they are clear and sharp)
Edit them to convert them to black and white and crop when needed; also edit to change photos from landscape to portrait view
Send them to get printed.
Order the frames (I would advice to buy a few extra frames incase one or two break or are faulty)
Plan out on a paper how you would like to place your frames. If all the frames are the same size, as in our case, it was pretty straight forward except that it wasn’t a perfect grid because of the ceiling angles. Sometimes it can be a straightforward grid, sometimes it won’t be.
Hang the frames yourself or hire a professional who will usually charge per hour
My husband, our two boys and I each have our ideas of which of the photos are our favorites and these change over time. Soon, we’ll starting printing a few new photos and rotating them with the existing ones. Now when we take a great photo, we catch ourselves saying “This would be a great one for the wall!”