Gallery Wall Guide: 5 Tips for Choosing the Best Wall Art Gallery Layouts

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Gallery wall location? Check! Gallery wall images? Check! It's time to nail down the perfect layout for your next wall art gallery!

So you’ve figured out where your gallery wall will go and which images you want to display… but how the heck are you supposed to display them? Let’s dive into a handful of tried-and-true tips for choosing the best layout for your next wall art masterpiece!

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  • Featured and Supporting Images
  • Balancing Sizes
  • Balancing Color
  • Balancing Content and Composition
  • When in Doubt...

Featured and Supporting Images

The first thing to consider is whether or not there is one image that you’d like to feature among the rest. If your clients do have a favorite photo out of the bunch, make that your largest piece and place it at eye-level. Build the rest of the gallery wall around this featured image, with smaller supporting products.

Photos by Martin Tosh Photography

Balancing Wall Art Sizes

While it’s totally fine to create asymmetrical gallery wall layouts, it’s still important to keep a balance in your designs. Consider your featured image to be the center of the see-saw of your gallery, keeping as much “weight” on one side as the other. Did you add two small images to the left side? Great, add one large image to the right, and you’ll be good to go.

Photos: Photography by Sharisse

Balancing Color

As you start adding photos to your gallery wall, be careful to keep similar colors separate from each other. If mixing black and white with color images, try to alternate them throughout your gallery so you don’t end up with one side more heavy with black and white or color than the other.

Photos by Chris & Adrienne Scott, Photographers

Balancing Content and Composition

Along the same lines as the previous two points, try to maintain balance in the compositional style and content of the photos in your gallery. If you have a few images with a lot of negative space, spread those out across the gallery instead of placing them near each other. If your chosen photos have multiple locations or similar poses, spread those across the gallery as well.

Photos by Chris & Adrienne Scott, Photographers

When In Doubt: Triptych or Grid

If you’re just looking to create a balanced, clean gallery wall design, you can never go wrong with a triptych, which is just a fancy term for “group of three photos”. Triptychs are tried and true and they’re about as visually appealing as any layout can get.

Not feeling a triptych? Try a grid, instead. Both layouts epitomize balance and will fit easily into just about any space.

Photos by Chris & Adrienne Scott, Photographers

Framed gallery wall of engagement session in San Francisco designed in Swift Galleries on a dark wall over a trendy couch.

Pro Tip:

The Swift Galleries wall gallery design software makes it a piece of cake to design gallery walls your clients will love! With predesigned layouts and an intuitive way to create and save your own new layouts, you’ll never run out of great gallery wall design ideas!

Try Swift Galleries for Free!

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Choosing the Best Gallery Wall Products
Gallery Wall Design by The Printmaker System

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Gallery Wall Ideas for Every Room

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