Guest room modern vintage gallery wall | House by the Bay Design

How to Create a Vintage Gallery Wall

My $100 room makeover has been moving along steadily. Last week was a lot of prep work and  instead of sharing an update showing lots of partially finished projects I decided to share two updates this week!

The first is my new gallery wall. I don’t know about you, but we had a bunch of old photographs and paintings just sitting in a closet. Some were my parents and some were my grandparents, many were in antique-style frames that don’t really “go” with our style – so they stayed in that closet until I figured out how to display them.

My solution – creating a gallery wall to display the antique pieces in a modern way. The is the wall I picked for my display (total blank canvas):

Guest room modern vintage gallery wall | House by the Bay Design

I started by selecting my favourite pieces that I wanted to display: two paintings, some old family photographs, a starburst-style mirror and a Gibson Girl illustration. Next, I traced each piece on some newsprint and started figuring out my layout on the wall.

Guest room modern vintage gallery wall | paper templates | House by the Bay Design

Because most of my pieces were rectangular I made some round and oval template pieces and added them in to mix things up a little.

Guest room modern vintage gallery wall | House by the Bay Design

Once I figured out the layout I liked I put up the pieces I had and shopped the house (and HomeSense) to find the extra pieces I needed to fill in the gaps.

Guest room modern vintage gallery wall | House by the Bay Design

So, how’s my $100 room makeover budget going? So far I’ve spent $20.33 on the small clock and the hanging mirror in this gallery wall. On Thursday I’ll be sharing the DIY pallet wood headboard I’ve built for this room.

My tips for creating a modern look vintage gallery wall:

  • Filling the entire wall and go close to the edges of the wall
  • Use different size pieces with a variety of shapes
  • Incorporate different mediums including paintings, photographs and mirrors
  • Try to be consistent with the shades of wood and metal

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