The art and/or family photos displayed on your walls can dramatically transform the look and feel of your home. For better or worse. It depends on how you display them. Mixing frame styles and materials can help you create a harmonious display rather than leaving your walls feeling chaotic.
4 Tips to Make Better Use of Your Wall Displays (in any room in the home)
Create Unity with the Colour Scheme
Frames are available in a multitude of colours and some of those go together harmoniously. It’s not out of the question to use different materials in the same space. Take, for example, a wood frame in mahogany for an antique print that wouldn’t fit well with the modern aesthetic that a shiny aluminium frame would provide. Light grey pairs well with the rich undertones of dark wood so as a complimentary piece, it’s entirely plausible to mix dark wood frames with a light grey frame. In a gallery wall type of layout, you could find that just that one different frame could be all you need to make a print into a standout statement piece that looks like it fits into the overall scheme perfectly.
Use the Mount Board to Unify Your Framed Prints
For personal photos, they’ll rarely all follow the same colour scheme. Some may have been taken outdoors in the summer, others in the autumn, and others taken perhaps as group photos indoors, or at an event. The only theme is family photographs. To help display them cohesively together without colours clashing, use the mount boards to create a consistent colour scheme. If the colour doesn’t feel like it’s cutting it, consider a larger frame with a wider mount to make the colours more of a feature.
Get Creative with Your Layouts for Wall Displays
The best wall displays for any type of wall art, be it professional prints, paintings, or personal photos are those that look like they’re hung with intention. Groupings that have been carefully thought through and imagination put into the display. Take an inventory of each photo frame you have that you would like to put on display. Measure them. Take notes of the orientation (portrait or landscape) and consider if any of the collection could be fit into a multi-photo frame as part of a singular collection like baby photos of six grandkids inside a single frame. That could create the focal point of a gallery wall with the surrounding family pictures displayed around it. The idea with gallery walls is mixing frame styles and layouts to create an intentional curation of your best photos.
Balancing Collections of Prints to Prevent a Feeling of Chaos
When working with a large number of frames, it’s easy to hang them and then feel like your walls have become cluttered. The thickness and darkness of the framing materials can play a role in this. To prevent overwhelm, it may help to mix your framing materials to balance out the weight and give a sense of proportionality to your display. As an example, a collection of thick wood frames with a deep recess could be balanced with some thinner frames in a lighter shade and smaller size.