Make a personal portrait gallery
Family photos that pop out on your phone can also pop out on a wall
In our photo-saturated world, with thousands of images on our devices, do we need pictures of our kids and dogs hanging in our homes, too?
The answer is still yes. But we’re not using family photos in the ways we used to.
“My clients want their family photos to have a visual impact and not be scattered throughout the house in random frames,” New York interior designer Ashley Whittaker said.
Family photos should stay in a home’s private spaces, New York interior designer Todd Klein said: the master bedroom, the dressing room and the mudroom. Three reasons dictate this: 1) It’s where you spend more time, so you interact with the images more frequently. 2) Most family photographs need to be viewed very closely because they are small and intimate. 3) Using a gallery configuration creates a bigger presence, like an art installation. So how do you narrow down the best images for framing? Start by doing a quick scroll through your camera roll, advised Tessa Wolf, creative director of the online framing company Framebridge. “Don’t spend more than five minutes doing it,” she said. “See what photos immediately pop out to you and mark them as favourites as you go; that way you can easily find them in an album.”
There are also professionals who can help. As part of her decorating services, Whittaker helps her clients curate their family photos. She and her team select, crop and edit the images, ensuring every family member is equally represented in the mix.
Once you select your favourites, choose a range of sizes and scales. If they’re all taken on the same day, go for a mix of closeup and distant images for visual interest. Also, Wolf said, mix the size of the photos to give a more organic feel to the final arrangement. If you want a more varied look, mix black-and-white photos with colour pictures. “Just be sure to have a nice mix of the two throughout the gallery wall so it looks balanced,” she said.
When it comes to printing images, most online sites will automatically check the image’s resolution and then suggest the largest size at which you can print it.
For framing, it’s OK not to match the frames, but those with a similar hue will create a more unified look. For example, Wolf suggested mixing white and silver or natural wood frames — using different widths and textures — but all in similar colour and tone.
Family keepsakes — diplomas, invitations, ticket stubs — are a nice touch in gallery walls. “Our goal is to create arrangements for our clients that feel special and, most of all, personal,” Whittaker said. Though incorporating other items is more interesting, it can also be more challenging to hang, so group similar hues, shapes, textures and patterns.
Wolf advised keeping five centimetres between each piece so that the arrangement looks intentional and maintains a degree of consistency — no matter how big it gets.