Gallery walls are a quick way to add color and life to a space, with a side order of style.

After spending the holidays travelling across the pond to visit friends and family, I was ready to get back home and back into the groove of working on our home. #NewYearNewHouseProjects

To ease myself back into the swing of things, I decided to start with a fun Sunday afternoon project: jazzing up the wall between our hall closet and downstairs powder room.

Here’s a throwback to what the wall looked like when we first moved in, before staining the hardwoods, replacing the door handles and painting the walls:

(Can you stand it?!)

Since this wall faces into our living room, it’s prime real estate for a cool print. Unfortunately, whoever installed the HVAC decided it was also prime real estate for a thermostat… making it impossible to center a picture between the two doors.

The silver lining: I had been scheming on hanging a gallery wall anyways, so this thermostat-sized bump in the road made our hallway wall the perfect spot!

Step One was picking our prints and frames (both of which were in ample supply, thanks to my obsession with Target’s photo kiosk and our awesome friends and family who gifted us frames for Christmas!)

The thing I love most about gallery walls is how they bring together all this diverse and distinct wall art (whether it’s frames or block letters or clocks…) to form something cohesive and awesome (granted, most people use actual art when they put together a gallery wall, but I really wanted to use this as a way to display pictures of us and our pups, Scout and Atlas!)

In that vein, I wanted all of our frames to be mismatched… but at the same time, tie back into the main elements of our room. To keep it cohesive, I chose frames that matched our existing color scheme: dark wood, black, and white.

While the frames fit in with our room, it was important that our photos stood out: this was a chance to throw some life and color onto our grey walls, one 4×6″ print at a time. (Did I mention I have a ridiculous supply of printed out photos to choose from?!)

Once I had chosen my prints and frames, I worked on assembling the collage on the floor. Hanging gallery walls can be something of an art form; there are templates and rules and layouts…

Since my project was on a smaller scale, I decided to keep it simple. I used my largest (and most unique) frame as the center point…

…then positioned the rest of my prints around it.

The thermostat blends right in!

Another great thing about a gallery wall: they can change with the seasons, or evolve with your room! You can swap out prints or frames, or add new art to change the vibe.

Our unfinished wooden ampersand, for example, doesn’t quite fit with the look and feel of our room… so he might be due a paint job.

(Yes, sometimes I watch Lifetime movies when I do house work.)

One more time, for dramatic effect: