There are many great things about gallery walls. Firstly, they can be inexpensive if need be—whether this means incorporating previously owned pieces or framing personal photographs and artworks yourself. Another upside? They are incredibly versatile. Below, we’ve collected five gallery wall ideas that give way to the myriad of potentials for pictures and placements.
In a Fifth Avenue New York City apartment, a sparse curation of delicately framed floated artworks hang on a loudly patterned wallpaper. In an artists residency in Lisbon, however, family photos are clustered together in a host of frames, sizes, and styles, creating an eclectic yet personal visual focal point in the hallway. Perhaps that’s the greatest part of the gallery wall: Even with no rhyme or reason—in a curatorial point of view—they still seem to always make sense. Confined in the right shape, the chaos can feel highly welcome, crafting the perfect personal touch to any type of home.
Who wouldn’t want to grow up in this eclectic New York apartment?
It was the opposite of love at first sight when Noe DeWitt first laid eyes on this apartment in New York City’s historic Gilsey House building. “I walked in, and I literally said, Absolutely not,” the photographer remembers. “It was in shambles, it hadn’t been touched since 1971. The windows were super thin, it was super noisy. There were piles of bricks in the middle of the living room. It was really, really depressing.” Way too much to sift through to find the place’s potential, Noe thought. His wife Carrie Hunt, the vice president of brand creative at J.Crew, had only one thing to say: “We’ll see about that.”
Together with the couple’s close friend, architect Jeffery Povero of Povero & Company, Noe and Carrie brought the home back to life. While the architect worked on reconfiguring out the layout, the couple filled the home with personal touches in every corner. Gallery style-hanging is shown in the living room, hallway, as well as the photographer’s closet. “When you hang art salon-style, you just sort of have to go for it,” Noe says. “Start with one point and go out from there. It doesn’t have to be totally filled—you want to leave a little room for growth. At the end of the day it’s just a small nail hole. The hardest part is committing to doing it.”
See how designer Nick Olsen transformed an 1840s Brooklyn town house
Entering Nick Olsen’s world, one quickly realizes that brown is never just brown. “Mink-brown” is how the decorator describes the paint he applied to the hallway doors of an 1840s Brooklyn Heights row house he renovated for a couple with four energetic young children. As for the kitchen walls, when Olsen hears a visitor call them off-white, he counters with “egg cream.” Then he swiftly corrects himself: “French vanilla—how about that?”
And on it goes inside this 4,100-square-foot, four-story Greek Revival dwelling: A ruby red cocktail table is fancifully dubbed Spanish rosé, while the study’s carpeting is “putting-green green.” Every shade of the spectrum, along with correspondingly over-the-top adjectives, has made its way into the house. Walking down the quiet tree-lined street and through the building’s arched double doors is like that moment in The Wizard of Oz when black-and-white turns to technicolor. To add a vibrancy to the stairwell, Nick crafted an eclectic double-height gallery wall brimming with personal photographs. An interplay between red and black frames adds a striking contrast.
A trio of archways is the defining feature of a colorful Brazilian home
Set in the São Paulo neighborhood of Jardim Paulistano and built in the 1940s, the town house was in a calm residential area of the city, but still close enough to the action at its center. There was a front patio with room for a fireplace and a lush garden in the back, sandwiching a pair of bedrooms and bathrooms that provided just enough space to stretch out together. “It was in great condition,” homeowner Stephanie Wenk says. “There were really no major issues.”
The family moved in and only made a few minor changes to the layout with help from architect Felipe Hess—most notably, they turned the third bedroom into a closet. Stephanie and her husband wanted to bring a brightness to the space. “We wanted to use colors that were joyful, but also nothing too tiring,” Stephanie says. They hired artist Jejo Cornelsen to paint the connecting rooms in independent yet coordinating hues: A mustard yellow in the family room, a pale pink in the middle entryway, and a sage green in the living room. To create a visual focal point that complimented the sage in the living room, the couple added a curved pink sofa, along with a series of black and white geometric paintings above.
We want to live in this colorful Lisbon artist’s residency
Stephane Mulliez can imagine the future before it appears. As a visual artist, she has willed forms and shades to pop and fade on materials of her choosing, pulling them from her mind and onto something others could experience for themselves. So, when she had an idea to open an artist’s residency known as La Junqueira, it was as if this process had expanded. Stephane could picture the end result, but had yet to find the right canvas. That was in 2012, and all she knew at the time was that the residency needed to be based in Lisbon. “Lisbon has a lot of great Portuguese and international artists who I wanted to help grow,” she says.
Stephane spent two years looking for the right location until she came across an 18th-century building in the variegated neighborhood of Belém—which happened to be serendipitously close to museums. She partnered with Specific Architectos for the job, which was completed in 2017, and they crafted an address with sun-filled workspaces, a relaxed bedroom, and a garden primed for well-deserved happy hours. Every nook is imbued with life. In the hallway picture above, Stephane crafted a clustered gallery wall of family photographs across form a wall of stain-glass paneling to create a personal and eclectic moment of intrigue.
Enter this young latinx curator’s enviable space
Creativity and self expression started at a young age. After watching her parents make each other scrapbooks filled with memories from their travels, Sophia Kardonski was inspired to express her creativity fully and unapologetically. “They always [encouraged] me to think outside of the box and be my own creative force,” says the 26-year-old curator, art collector, and founder of The Love You—an alternative gallery space representing emerging, contemporary artists, curators, chefs, and creatives. Surrounded by mentors like seasoned art collector Rosa de la Cruz and passion-filled environments (like Central Saint Martins, a storied art school in London), the Cuban Panamanian multi-hyphenate successfully embedded style into her DNA. Now that she’s living back home in Miami, Sophia crafted a unique space of her own in an art-filled loft that houses collectibles to craft her perfect cozy, creative abode.
A spacious Fifth Avenue apartment combines eclectic art with a modern allure
Perfumer Frédéric Malle and his wife Marie designed their family’s Manhattan apartment with a polished Parisian influence. In the master bedroom, a GP & J Baker wallpaper sets the tone. In the corner (pictured above), artworks range from a Boldini etching to Duane Michals photographs. The perfectly spaced collection sits behind a Louis XVI Bergère from Château de Groussay. With frames ranging from ornate and gilded to metallic and modern, the gallery wall marries old world Parisian luxury with a modern spirit.
