How To Hang A Tropical Gallery Wall

This post has been sponsored by Minted, but all thoughts, design and opinions are mine alone.

I knew as soon as we bought a house and were officially growing roots here in Hawaii, I wanted to create a gallery wall that would be representative of the life we have built — think dreamy beach days and bright colors. I have created gallery walls in our home before, but they were always a cluster of frames I had haphazardly thrown up in an effort to unpack boxes and just have *something* up on the walls. Because our gallery wall is the first thing you see when you walk into our house, I also wanted to be more intentional about what I chose to put up. And I don’t know about anyone else…but now that I own these walls, I am WAY more picky about how many holes are getting made.

The first thing I did was take a measurement of the wall to see how much room I was working with. Then, I took pieces of printer paper and laid them out in different patterns on the floor below the wall to see what I liked best – think: shapes, sizes and formatting.

I knew right away that I wanted a few larger prints instead of a bunch of smaller ones and once I had picked a layout I liked, I took sizes for each print. I landed on 5 pieces, all of varying dimensions. I already owned one piece of artwork that I knew I would be incorporating, so I built my pattern around that one piece. From there, I logged onto Minted to fill in the gaps.

Minted has always sold a variety of art pieces by artists from around the world (I love that!), so I took a peek at their designs and fell in love. I was immediately drawn to the water color work that reminded me of lazy days at the beach and I just kept coming back to the stand alone palm frond for the simplicity. I needed one more print to complete my wall and I was telling this to Dane he said — what about making art from a photo? Of course, Minted offers a great deal of fun collages and mats with words on them, but I stuck with a simple enlarged print.  I don’t know why I didn’t think of this sooner, but as soon as he said it, I already knew what photo I wanted to use.

Last spring, we had a family photo session with Cait Schlabach Photography at one of our favorite beaches and she captured a couple dreamy sunset pics and included them in our package.

The colors blended so well with the pieces I had already chosen!

When you’re checking out, Minted allows you to have the pieces custom framed in a ton of different options. I mentioned earlier that all of my previous gallery walls had been a mishmash of frames and photos with no real theme. I knew I wanted to keep everything in the “light and bright” family, so I chose all white frames, with the exception of our beach photo. I went with a driftwood-inspired frame that was only a small upgrade from the white frames I had chosen. I kind of wanted that piece to “pop” against the others and it worked out pretty well!

We installed a custom light fixture in our entryway that brings the entire look together, in my opinion. What do you think?

If I had to give 3 of my best tips for designing a similar wall in your own house they would be:

1. Make use of the space. If you have a big wall – don’t be afraid to go big. It’s a little hard to tell in these photos, but my pieces are quite large…and I LOVE it!

2. Mix it up. I was a little bit worried about how the photo would look against the more abstract pieces, but I really love it.

3. Use space to your advantage. If you can’t afford bigger prints, use wall space to your advantage, by utilizing larger, but proportionate spacing between prints.

And bonus tip: Use what you love! Why bother putting a wall together if they aren’t photos or works of art that just genuinely make you happy when you look at them?

Do you have a gallery wall in your home? What photos or art did you use?