This is the first home where I have had family photographs on the walls. I’m not sure why but it just wasn’t something that I thought looked good until recently. I got a taste for it after adding a few pictures into our downstairs toilet and loved how they looked. I wanted to add a gallery wall above our sofa for ages but I was struggling to match photograph colours to the decor and to each other so I decided to go for black and white.
I uploaded all the photographs I loved into Lightroom so that I could try to match the tone between them. I liked the idea of them being really black and moody. The idea being that they would stand out less as individual photographs and more as one solid wall of prints.
Our sofa is pretty long at 250cm so I knew I would need a lot of photographs to fill the space. Initially I wanted to use White Company box frames but the price would have been over £400 so I had to rethink. I think I was convinced glass frames would look so much better until I saw some Pinterest images of the Ikea Lomviken frames.
Inspiration from Pinterest
This is how the space above the sofa looked before we hung the frames. In my opinion it just felt a bit lost and need something. (The lamp still needs to be replaced to something more contemporary but I haven’t got around to that yet)
I ordered my prints from Photobox in the 12″ x 8″ size and gloss finish. They fit extremely snuggly into the frame mount so I used sellotape to keep them in place. Ideally I would have ordered a larger print size but every other online printing service seemed to charge so much more for this and actually it worked out completely fine.
After choosing the prints I wanted use I lay them on the floor and moved them into different positions. Trying to space the lighter images away from each other and making sure no two close up images were sat side by side. These images are wading heavy and they will change over the coming months once I have some pictures of our new arrival!
This is the finished look and I absolutely love it. It has made the room close in a little bit but actually that is a bonus as it feels more cosy in here now. A feeling I thought I would struggle to create in a new build home. Although it is only for a few weeks of the year I always think about how this too will look at Christmas! That seems to be the deciding factor for how I decorate a living room! This wall cost me less than £100 to do (it would have been cheaper if I had braved Ikea instead of choosing delivery of the frames) and I love that it can evolve as my photographs do.
Let me know what you think and whether you have created the same in your home!
Totally love it! Am going to recreate in my bedroom 🙂
Also pinching your dressing table shelf idea! Thsnks
Can I ask where the sofa is from?
Author
Thank you. They’re from the Joules range at DFS
Love these and am totally going to copy you. Am terrible at hanging things. What did you use? Thank you (and good luck with the baby!!) X
Fabulous! I’m definitely going to copy this
Love your IG account and have recently discovered your blog.. thanks for sharing! We’ve been in our house a year and need to put something on the walls so you’ve given me just the inspo’ consider me influenced 😉
I know you’ve written the size of the photos but which frame size did you order (I find it so confusing that the IKEA frames are in cm and photographs are in inches 🤦🏼♀️)
Great photo wall. Where did you get the photo mounts from?
Hey, I absolutely love the wall colour you have in your living room. We have just moved into a new home with a very similar size space and a navy sofa! Can I ask what paint did you use? Thanks!
Author
Thank you. I have pigeon by farrow and ball in here 🥰
I’m a big fan of Lomviken frames especially when we need to use multiple frames on a gallery wall. Also, so pleased you put the name of that paint in the comment above as I was just about to ask what it was!