Approaches and Inspiration for Filling up Your Bare Walls with Art

Read the sizing notes before the shopping list. Scale is the part that is hard to return. Thanks so much to everyone who filled out my blog survey this past week – it was great to hear from so many of you! One of the many blog post topics a few of you suggested is to talk about where to get started with a project and find inspiration for it. Great idea! Since almost all of us have at least a bare wall or two in our homes that could use some art, let's talk about finding inspiration for adding new art to your home (but know that these same pointers apply to pretty much any project you're looking to knock out). post includes some affiliate links – full disclosure statement available {here}

Where To Find Creative Approaches and Inspiration

One of the easiest places to find design inspiration is in your mailbox – catalogs like Pottery Barn and William Sonoma Home hire notable stylists for their catalog shoots and they are full of polished, creative approaches! So you can see what kind of things I find, I'll share the approaches I took away from flipping through my most recent catalogs for about 30-45 minutes. First off, I found this finished gallery wall arrangement from Pottery Barn's catalog – love it!

Pottery Barn

It's pretty unlikely that you'd be able to totally replicate this exact art arrangement since you probably have a different sized media console and art pieces but an image like this is a great jumping off point. It's super helpful for getting an idea of how many art pieces you might need for a similar space and the balance of larger vs. smaller pieces. Then it's just a matter of gathering together the art pieces that you already have, figuring out what else you need and planning an arrangement that works for your space.

This image from William Sonoma Home is another good one to draw inspiration from – they used one large central art piece surrounded by four smaller, identically sized ones. Such a nice simple solution for that above-the-sofa space!

Williams Sonoma Home

If you're thinking about creating a gallery wall and want more details on how to plan it out and where to find great art pieces, be sure to look at {this post} from several years back about the design of the house office gallery wall. Also Pottery Barn has a good post with approaches for arranging gallery walls {here}.

I also came upon this Pottery Barn image and fell in love with this simple idea. Maybe it's just me but I'm a little leary about what I hang above a bed (especially in my kids rooms) because of fear of what would happen if it fell down. I actually took the glass out of the the frames above my oldest daughter's bed for this exact reason A strong choice is the idea of a large lightweight basket – you can't get much easier than that and the look has a polished simplicity to it (you can find this basket on PB's site {here}):

Pottery Barn

I also found this image of a woven piece above a chest in the Pottery Barn catalog that inspired me. In some rooms (like this one) there are a lot of right angles so something with some curves really helps to break things up and soften the space. I often use a round mirror above a chest of drawers (you can see an example in our master bedroom {here}) but I'd never thought of something like this – A strong choice is the softness and texture that it adds to the room:

Pottery Barn

And how about approaches for art in a kid's room? PB Teen catalogs are full of them! A strong choice is this black and white lacrosse photo collage mural – think about creating your own using your child's personal photos and a service that creates collage wrapped canvas prints like Zazzle.

PB Teen

This next idea is from Urban Outfitters – A strong choice is the way they hung their floral print (available {here}) with two large clips! I'm filing this fun idea away for when we redo my youngest daughter's room – it's such a cool look and also makes it easy to swap different art pieces in and out:

Urban Outfitters

I'm also inspired by this idea from the PB teen catalog of closely grouping together a block of frames in a grid pattern and then adding words on top of them – PB Teen no longer sells these but you can buy similar ones in different sizes {here}:

PB Teen

And finally, A strong choice is the way {these prints} were hung on the wall using boat cleats and rope don't you?! I used {this boat cleat} and rope to hang one of the pieces in the house office gallery wall years ago but I like the way they tied their rope much better – great inspiration to switch mine up!

Pottery Barn

Where else can you find inspiration? Everywhere you go! Whether you're on vacation or even taking a walk around your neighborhood, look around you and when you see something that interests you, snap a quick pic to file away the idea for future projects. On our vacation last year, I noticed that one of the restaurants we ate at used boat cleats to hold the bench cushions in place – it's such a cute idea for a bench seat but it also got me thinking that it would be a cool look to hang a large horizontal art piece with strips of leather and a pair of boat cleats:

And a store I was recently in had this fabulous mirror (it was insanely expensive!) surrounded and hung by large wood beads that I thought would be a great future DIY project so it's another thing I snapped a pic of:

And a final source of inspiration? Blogs of course! And I'm not just talking about you, A strong choice is getting inspiration from my blogging friends too! If you follow me on Instagram (you can find me on Instagram {here} if you don't!) you may have seen that a few months back I scored a large gold wall medallion at a local thrift store. I tried it out on the wall going into our dining room and the wall by our kitchen banquette but I don't think either is the best permanent spot. I couldn't think of where else to put it until I saw Kelley Nan's porch makeover (hop over to see her “before” and “after” makeover {here}!) where she used three medallions over the sectional in her outdoor space. Why didn't I think of using them outside?! I'm trying that pronto!

Kelley Nan

Ways to Organize Your Home Decor Inspiration Pics

Once you've found some inspiring pics, find a way that works for you to keep them organized! For me, that's through Pinterest (you can follow me on Pinterest {here} if you aren't already!). One of my Pinterest boards is called “Gallery Wall Inspiration” so I pin all of my inspiration for creating future art walls on that board (you can find my Gallery Wall Inspiration board {here} if you want to snag some of my approaches!):

You can even upload your own photos to Pinterest to add to your boards so you don't have to go searching back through the zillion photos on your iPhone like I usually do… Pinterest is also a great place to find inspiration from other pinners – for example if you're planning a kitchen redo you'll find tons of great approaches on my Kitchen Pinterest board {here} or if you want to spruce up your entry way, I have a Pinterest board for that too {here}.

It would help if readers found this post helpful in getting you inspired for your next project and that you picked up a few good approaches for hanging art along the way! I'll see you back on the blog in a few days!