Rethinking our wall of art

12 November 2014

Sometimes, we just don’t get things right on the first try, am I right? Once I started to plan our house’s color scheme, I knew I wanted to order a very large canvas of one of our wedding photos for the long wall on our first floor. The colors were perfect, and I loved the idea of being reminded of that beautiful day without having life-size portraits of ourselves staring back at us!

We saved up and ordered the largest size available through our photographer as our Christmas gift to each other in 2013. When it arrived, I was blown away by the quality (it looks like a painting even very close up!), but was a little sad it wasn’t larger. It’s 36×24″, but I would have loved for it to be even a foot wider to really fill that space.

For the last several months, I’ve known the wall was not finished, but I couldn’t figure out what to add to it thanks to a very unfortunately placed thermostat – right in the middle of the wall!! How rude. If this was our forever house, I would bust in and move that sucker over to sit on top of the light switch, but alas, that is not in the cards here. Slightly awkward, isn’t it?

photo 2

Finally, I realized that instead of creating a grouping around the canvas to fill that space (I could never figure out a good way to do it), the best option would be to move the canvas over and add new art in its place. I would love to do a grid of four large frames, very orderly, to balance out the single large canvas and the more organic gallery grouping on the other living room wall. Please excuse my very poor Photoshop skills, but something like this…

four-wall-mockup

I’ve been looking for a spot to do a grid like this, so I’m glad I finally found one! Here’s my inspiration:

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Sources: Design Mom | HGTV | unknown | Design*Sponge

For the frames, I’m planning to do light wood – Target has some great options right now that I hope are large enough! I think black would be too harsh and white wouldn’t have enough contrast against our white wall. The photos will be black and white family photos, I think – maybe wedding themed. We shall see, and I will update y’all when we do!

P.S. More photos of our home!

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Melanie
November 12, 2014 8:25 am

I love the canvas print, and I think the grid is a great idea!

Have you ever thought about putting a canvas on a hinge to cover the thermostat?

http://thechicsite.com/2014/09/16/hide-thermostat/

November 12, 2014 8:26 am

I love a good gallery wall :) I can’t wait to see how yours turns out, Em!

November 12, 2014 9:15 am

Sounds perfect, I cannot wait to see how it turns out!

Sarah
November 12, 2014 10:32 am

I love your inspiration for the grid of frames! And also your canvas-seriously dreamy. Another idea popped into my head when I was looking at your pictures- what about a long console table on that wall? You could lean some sort of tall frame, or place a large vase or lamp on the console table to cover up that “wall wart” of a thermostat, and just slide it over when you need to make temp adjustments. I actually don’t think the thermostat looks that bad at all, but I find it strangely satifying to hide things like that! Not sure if it makes sense for your layout to put a table there, but a nice long console could also visually unify the art you have hanging above and around it!

Katie C
November 12, 2014 3:05 pm

We totally stole this idea from you after our wedding and have a great canvas from our wedding brunch to remind us of our perfect day! Love it.
We used mpix.com to print our canvas as a rec from our photographer. I’d highly recommend them. Very good prices.
And 3M picture hanging strips make gallery wall hanging a breeze!

Em
November 13, 2014 9:36 am

@Melanie Very interesting! If I don’t like the canvas in its new proposed spot, I will definitely consider that!

@Sarah We have definitely considered a console table and might add one in the future, but for now I think we’re going to stick with art!

November 13, 2014 6:10 pm

I can’t wait to see what you do with the space. We’re still trying to figure out the art situation in our house, I know I want a great big mirror somewhere… but where? haha. Good luck!