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My sister has the most fantastic toilet. Well, it’s just your bog-standard toilet, and it’s one of 3 toilets in her home, but it is still probably my favourite room in the entire house. She also has a really nice house and I am jealous.
Anyway, the reason it is my favourite room in her house, is that the focus wall is covered head to toe with probably nearly 100 different-sized framed paintings and prints. A collection that she likely spent tens of years creating through purchases at local charity shops. It really is quite impressive.
I have always dreamed of creating something similar, only I don’t really have the same time or passion to replicate my sister’s somewhat obsessive efforts. Therefore, instead of years/decades poking through charity shops, I decided to create something similar using a more contemporary collection of wall art prints from Desenio, the Scandinavian wizards when comes to gallery wall design.
Creating Your Own Gallery Wall
So apparently these are known as ‘Gallery Walls’ and Desenio have an entire section of inspirational gallery walls online to more or less buy straight out-of-the-box designs, which would be the simple option. But they also have a ‘Create Your Own’ template section and thousands of unique framed prints (around 7000) to personalise your very own work of wall art.
At the same time, creating your own gallery wall is also a simple option, with an easy step-by-step guide to follow in personalizing your very own wall gallery by simply following the 4 steps below:
- Select background
- Select Picture Wall
- Select Design (Art Prints and Posters)
- Frame Your Designs with a range of different frames.
Once complete, just add to your basket, or save for later and go on and make another. We ended up doing a lot of the latter. It’s kind of addictive.
Personalizing Your Gallery Wall
Ever watched the main title sequence of the HBO series “The White Lotus”? For some reason, I’ve had a weird obsession with the tropical patterns of the title sequence, and just the overall aesthetics of the Hawaii beach resort based show. Armond’s shirts! So I did a quick search for tropical birds and there are just too many to choose from.
But Fanfan, who literally has a degree in interior design (well, a BA in Applied Arts), overruled me on this decision, as she did with Armond’s delightful floral shirts. A man can only dream. Anyway, instead, we agreed on a gallery wall inspired by our shared interests, which isn’t always easy to be fair, given it’s mostly just food, travel and cats? And I ended up finding myself tracking back again to the birds category. I do like birds.
Infinite Options for Wall Design
This inevitably led us down a rabbit hole, where we’d fill baskets with all sorts of weird and wonderful wall art (only to find later that it’s smarter to just add them to ‘favourites’). We would then each remove those we did not like and end up with a weird mishmash of random wall art. Which is kind of what we had intended.
The intention of this gallery wall was not so much to create or complement a feeling or ambience in the room (although Desenio has some great designs for these). Instead, it was more about creating something that people can indulge in and explore. And it feels very much like the beginning of something much bigger, something we will expand and add to, as the start of (eventually) covering the entire wall.
Next Level Wall Galleries
A Change of Scenery? One of the first rooms we decorated was the guest room filling the wall space with our favourite prints. Then we realized that maybe our tastes are not best suited to our guests (surely everyone loves birds and sheep?). This is when we realised how simple it is to just swap pictures around. There’s no need to remove the frames or mess with the gallery as we can just swap around the actual prints.
This also works for many different reasons. You can’t pick between certain prints? Just buy them all then switch between them when bored. Fancy a change in mood? Different colours for different seasons. Want to screw with your friends and family? Switch them around every time they visit and pretend they’ve never changed. “No, that cat in space has always been above the fireplace!” So wall art doesn’t have to be permanent and prints are incredibly easy to store.
The Canvas Art Prints
With most folk, I’d find they hang the same pictures in their homes for decades to life. My parents for example still have pictures up since I was in diapers. But this seems to be in line with most people who fall in love with certain paintings and they hang it like their pride and joy. But it’s not the same for us fickle folk. And it’s the same reason I’ll never get a tattoo knowing I’ll likely be cringing at it in a week or two.
It depends on the investment I guess. In this instance it is taking the step up from framed prints to canvass. While the canvas prints are still relatively inexpensive they are more permanent. So again the framed prints offer a way to trial the longevity of these art prints before committing to hang that massive Van Gogh – Almond Blossom canvas behind your bed. We were so close! As these canvas options are perfect to complement the larger feature walls.
The Personalised Prints
When my parents aren’t on a cruise they are planning for one, and we had the idea while on their recent adventures to create a personalised print as a gift for their return. A printed collage featuring all their best bits through previous cruises. We did try but it was hard to find photos without heads or limbs chopped off or fingers over the lens. They don’t take the most flattering of photos.
So we made one for ourselves instead. It is of course possible to frame individual photos and pictures but we’ve always felt uncomfortable having big pictures of ourselves decorating a wall. Something we learned the hard way when Fanfan’s mum plastered her front room with massive photos of our wedding. “Get them down get them down”.
Instead we opted for the more subtle collage sharing some of our favourite travel photos together in a dark oak frame. It fits well. It is also fairly simple to create these collages using free software online (we used Adobe) before uploading them to Desenio and adding an optional caption. “Adventures of Allan & Fanfan”
