Shop gallery wall prints and gallery wall ideas at TheArtFolio. The Gallery walls collection groups artist works that hang well together as framed archival prints for UK homes.
What is a gallery wall?
A gallery wall is a group of framed works planned as one hang, not a single statement print and not a poster collage. On TheArtFolio each piece stays an individual artist work: you choose moulding, mount and size on the product page, then we make it to order and hand-frame it in the UK.
Grid or salon: decide this first
Every gallery wall is one of two things and they are planned differently. A grid is regular — same size, same frame, even gaps, usually four, six or nine pieces. It reads as deliberate, it suits modern rooms and corridors, and it is far easier to get right, because the only real decision is the spacing. A salon hang mixes sizes and orientations around a loose centre. It reads as collected rather than bought, it suits period rooms and stairwells, and it is much harder to make look intentional rather than accidental.
If this is your first one, do a grid.
The two measurements that matter
Hang the group so the centre of the whole arrangement sits about 145–150 cm from the floor. That is gallery height and roughly eye level standing. The instinct is to hang higher, which is the commonest mistake and the one that makes a wall look like a noticeboard. Above a sofa or a sideboard, measure from the furniture instead and leave 15–20 cm of clear wall between the top of the furniture and the bottom of the lowest frame.
Then the width. The whole group, outer edge to outer edge and gaps included, wants to span about two thirds of the furniture below it — a 220 cm sofa takes a group about 145 cm across. That figure does more to make a gallery wall look right than the choice of images does.
Gaps
About 5 cm between frames, and the same gap everywhere. Tighter and the frames read as one cluttered object; beyond about 8 cm the group falls apart into separate pictures. If you are mixing sizes, hold the gaps constant and let the outer edges of the whole arrangement form a rough rectangle — the eye reads the outline of the group before it reads any single piece.
Plan it on the floor, then on the wall
Lay the whole arrangement out on the floor in front of the wall and move it around until it settles. Then cut paper rectangles at the framed outer sizes — roughly 53 × 68 cm for Small, 63 × 80 cm for Medium, 78 × 98 cm for Large — and tape them up at the spacing you settled on. Live with the paper for a day. It costs nothing and it catches the height problem before you put a hole in the plaster.
One frame finish, varied sizes
Keep a single moulding and colour across the whole group. That one constraint is what makes a mixed set of images read as a collection rather than as whatever happened to be on the wall already. Vary the size instead: a Large piece as the anchor with Small and Medium pieces around it gives the arrangement a centre without needing the images to match. A single mount colour is the safer choice on a first hang.
Odd numbers are easier in a salon hang — three, five, seven — because there is a natural centre. Grids are the reverse: four, six or nine, because the symmetry is the point.
Choosing the works
One theme, several treatments, is the formula that works: a coastal set, a botanical set, a run of London architecture, one artist across several subjects. Enough in common that the group has a reason to exist, enough difference that you keep looking. The Gallery walls collection is twenty-eight works grouped for exactly this, and seascape, botanical and London are the three that most often supply a whole wall between them.
One thing to avoid: more than one dominant focal point. Two dark, high-contrast pieces in the same group fight each other and everything between them disappears. One anchor, everything else quieter.
For three panels that are one image rather than a set of separate works, you want a triptych — a different hang, with different spacing.
