If you’ve ever attempted it you know, gallery wall planning is a mix of art and science – or more accurately, math. Yes, you read the post title right – today I’m going to share with you how to use math you learned in elementary school to get your gallery wall just right!
A true designer might scoff at this. Why would you bring math into the equation? (See what I did there?) But for those of us who can’t just throw 20 pieces of art flawlessly on a wall and make it work, we need the help of numbers.
The very first thing I did was take a picture of the wall I was planning around and took some measurements. The picture wasn’t pretty – and now that I’m blogging, I’m kicking myself for at least not cleaning off the table first. But hey, I had just moved into my apartment and was still unpacking. Sigh.
Anyway, here’s the picture of the wall – exported after I worked on the layout in PowerPoint:
Where The Gallery Wall Planning Math Comes In …
After I got the picture, I took some measurements. If the wall itself was 75” by 45,” I created a PowerPoint slide that was proportionate – 10” by 6.” (I’m changing the numbers so they’re a bit cleaner here.) Using some simple cross-multiply and divide, we can determine that each inch in real life is equal to .1333 inches in the PowerPoint document.
From there, you can place your pieces as you find them and move them around on PowerPoint to get the perfect design. Shown above.
Once you copy / paste a photo of the piece (or a shape placeholder) into the document, simply resize by multiplying by .1333. Example – a 8” x 10” piece in real life equals 1.066” x 1.333” in PowerPoint.
This sounds really complicated, I know, but once you get going, it’s very simple and gives you so much versatility to play around with what goes where.
My Finished Gallery Wall
And I love the final gallery-wall product! As you can see, some pieces changed from what was pictured in the PowerPoint as I got moving. But, I’m so glad I had this as a guide.
Where You Can Find My Art (From Left To Right)
Summering Forever by Emily Jeffords on Minted
Drink More Gin by Robert Rubbish
Marble photo on Shutter Stock (I printed across two 8 x 10 pieces of photo paper)
Customized map of Lincoln Park by GridLove on Etsy
Carved wood trio from Target
Color chart wrapping paper from Paper Source – yes, I framed a piece of wrapping paper!
Original acrylic flower painting by Source and Summit
Watercolor print on Shutter Stock (printed on 11″ x 17″ and cropped to three 3″ x 3″ pieces)
Inhale / Exhale at home printable by Kiwi N Berries on Etsy
Frames from Tiny Mighty Frames and Art to Frames.
I hope this helps you next time you’re doing some gallery wall planning! What other tips do you have?
This post contains affiliate links. Learn more about what that means here.
I’m trying HELP ME! I feel like it’s easier to work in large prints than smaller prints/objects, but the smaller ones seem necessary for balance.
They absolutely are! Try grouping some of the smaller objects to fill gaps between bigger ones! That always helps me.
This is a very interesting way and I love how your gallery wall looks. I posted how I do mine in my blog and I took other thing into consideration but not maths. Impressive! Keep it up!
Thank you! I’m going to check yours out too! Always interesting to get new ideas!