The Luxe Home Design Alternative To Basic Gallery Walls

Choosing art and décor items for your walls can often entail lots of conflicting advice. While some homeowners and designers swear by gallery walls as a great solution for dealing with large blank spaces and creating a dynamic focal point, many also believe there can be drawbacks to this approach. When poorly executed, gallery walls can look chaotic, unpolished, and junky. Bad choices in art, placement, scale, and framing for DIY gallery walls can make your room look even smaller than it is. It can also be expensive to purchase prints, original art, and matching frames to execute the perfect gallery wall all at once. Some designers suggest that a better solution may be creating well-curated vignettes and using single art pieces to present a more elevated look.

Creating strategic vignettes using less pieces can often prevent overwhelming a space with artwork, allowing you to choose what are truly favorites on your walls. Simplicity is also a great guideline in more minimalistic spaces, as well as smaller rooms that get visually cluttered very easily. 

To execute a more minimalist approach when hanging wall art, try focusing on smaller spaces. "'Use your phone as a tool — pretend like you're a photographer and just look at the space through the lens," New York-based designer Noa Santos tells Homes & Gardens. "What is feeling unbalanced? What is unfinished? And go from there. It's helpful to analyze those photos. Design can be enjoyed in smaller gestures and you can start with just a corner of your house." This approach not only allows less margin for design error when outfitting a space, but it can also be less expensive in the long run. By focusing on smaller vignettes, you can be more selective when purchasing or sourcing art that fits your aesthetic. 

For a big space, larger artwork can also present a much stronger and cleaner focal point and luxurious look than smaller pieces. This is a beautiful gallery wall alternative, per HGTV's Nate Berkus. Even smaller pieces, when arranged in conjunction with other furniture and décor elements, can have much more impact when used alone than in a grouping of many pieces.

Looking for ways to get a lot of impact with individual pieces instead of creating a gallery wall? You don't have to spend a fortune to get an elevated and luxe look. There are lots of ways to create impactful pieces of art on a budget that stand well alone.

To frame a large-format piece of art for above a sofa, bed, or console, use wall molding around a frameless-frame or inexpensive canvas for a clever faux frame hack. While paintings, drawings, and photographs are old standards, you can also repurpose a thrift store blanket on a wood frame to create a large piece of art. For smaller pieces, transform inexpensive IKEA photo frames with touches like decorative appliques, paint treatments, gold leaf, and vintage-style frame corners before hanging them on your walls. Or, use rehabbed thrift store frames by replacing the current artwork. In addition to art, pieces like beautiful mirrors, wall moldings, and other architectural details can also add interest to walls in subtle ways that feel more luxurious and look less cluttered.