One of the best ways to personalize a space—whether it’s your dorm room, home, or office—is with a gallery wall. Whenever you’re making a gallery wall, the first thing you have to decide is how you want it to feel. For my daughter’s college dorm room, she wanted something fun and personal. She ordered and framed some things, I made some others, and then it all came together. For all of my daughters’ dorms (and I’ve done 6 move-ins at this point), they decide what they want to incorporate and we figure out how it fits together as we hang it.
It’s always visually interesting when a gallery wall combines a mix of different mediums: artwork along with photos and even framed mementos like a champagne cork from a party alongside a photo of that night, or your pet’s pawprint). And to make a dorm room feel more familiar you can add a piece from home—like this custom portrait of our dog Groot by a local artist, which used to hang in our place.
You can pick up plenty of tips on how to plan and hang a gallery wall from the one in my office. Here, I want to focus on what to hang, both in regular frames and, for three-dimensional objects like a cork or the plaster pawprint, deeper shadow box frames (which I like to call “scrapboxes”). The mix adds personality to any room, showcasing the places and people that matter most to you.
Artwork
The art you buy can reflect not just your taste your personal history. Consider the following categories
• A nod to your hometown–here, it’s a print from the New Yorker magazine
• A pet portrait. This one is a portrait of our dog Groot which I had commissioned for our home. I’m not trying to encourage your kids to leave you with blank spaces on your wall, but that’s one way to do it!
• Places you’ve visited—or would love to travel to someday. This ski image of Zermatt, Switzerland came from Etsy, and this print of the Amalfi coast is from Desenio.
• Abstract artwork. Desenio is also where she sourced this abstract print.
• Original artwork by someone you love. For a gallery wall in your office, you might frame a drawing one of your kids made. My daughter flipped that script for her college dorm by framing my own illustration of a bouquet.
The wide range of images work together because the frames are in a unified color palette of white and wood.
Here are five great places to find art:
• Frame the cover of a magazine
• Support independent artists on Etsy
• Browse art sites like Desenio
• Frame original art from a friend—or your own artwork!
• Download and print out “open access” art from websites with large archives like the National Gallery of Art or the Metropolitan Museum of Art
• Buy pre-framed art from Minted, which has drawings, paintings, photographs, and mixed media
Framed Photos
A photo can be displayed in any size of frame—you don’t have to make the size of the photo match the frame, or limit yourself to flat frames. Try a shadowbox or consider:
• Lining up a grid of instant photos
• Grouping several photo strips (from photo booths, arcades, wherever!) in one large frame
• Or, slice up a strip and use two of the four images to fill a small frame. Your bestie can frame the bottom two for their gallery wall.
Keep the frame colors and shapes consistent for unity, but feel free to play around with the backdrop of the frame, lining it in dark paper or fabric. For how-to info, click here.
DIY Memento Frames
I’m a firm believer that you can frame (almost) anything! All it takes is a box frame and some imagination. (OK, a little more than that—but not much, and you’ll find all the pro tips here.) Some mementos we framed for this wall include a commemorative button/badge, a champagne cork alongside a photo from the event where it was popped, some shells from a summer’s day at the beach, and our dog, Groot’s, pawprint.
Pawprint Box
You can’t always bring your pet to college, but you can bring their pawprint. We used a 3D Plaster pawprint kit to preserve Groot’s pawprint, then framed it in a shadowbox. Here’s the full how-to.
Shell Scrapbox
Bring the summer sun to a winter’s afternoon with this framed memento of a day on the shore. We attached shells to the back of a shadowbox using glue dots (but a gluegun would work too) for that eternal summer vibe.
Celebratory Cork
Daisy framed a cork from her senior year cast party against an image of that year’s show. You could do the same with your wedding invitation, an engagement picture, a birthday party—any celebratory occasion you want to remember each time you see the frame.
