Raise your hands if you love a gallery wall – I certainly do but sometimes getting pictures and artwork to fill a gallery wall can be frustrating and expensive. When we first started out with our first gallery wall in our loft and now another in our dining room, we knew we wanted a blue-ish theme (we have a little blue in every room) but while we had purchased some artwork, we didn’t quite have enough for an entire gallery wall. While yes artwork should be purchased slowly and only when you really find something you like and fits in with the space, when dealing with gallery walls, you need a lot of artwork and prints all at the same time. Sometimes those 2 things aren’t congruent with each other.
We wrote a post previously on some of our favorite etsy artists but its important to balance out the artwork on your walls. Unless you were going for a specific theme (say portraits only – like this one we love from Architectural Digest), its good to balance it out with artwork, photographs and graphic design. This gives the gallery wall a sense of curated variety – rather than I bought all this artwork to hang on my wall or I found a bunch of photographs and stuck them on.
We went online and found a lot of free and legal high resolution pictures that we could use to fill the holes in our gallery wall while we continue to curate work that we loved. Most of these photographs are copyright restriction free or have been licensed under the creative commons public domain. Not lying but some of the great pictures we found online are making it directly into our curated gallery walls! In fact, the black and white one we have in our dining space is from Snapwire Snaps!
Here are some of our favorite sites for free high resolution photos:
- Unsplash : You get 10 new photos every 10 days! Arguably one of my favorite sites. How great would this succulent look on your wall? Better on my wall than in my pot honestly – I am afterall the infamous succulent killer of the east coast.
- Gratistography: These are photos by a photographer named Ryan McGuire and his work is quirky and sometimes a little strange. Great for bringing in a little whimsy into your space! Now tell me this isn’t cute and weird! I actually have this hanging in our home office strangely enough – its a good reminder to me to stop horsing around and get some work done!
- Negative Space: What’s great about negative space is the fact that you can search for photos using categories which would come in useful if you are looking for a specific something something. Perhaps a black and white ones for a loft space!
- Life of Pix: Mostly landscapey type of pictures, not quite up our gallery wall alley but still nice to peruse. Look at how cute this one is with the red and blue sheds! Adorbs!
- New Old Stock: You’ll need a little patience going through these but these old vintage photos are sometimes to die for! I personally love old vintage photos of buildings – putting one somewhere on its own just brings a little old world charm in!
- Snapwire Snaps: Pretty similar to Unsplash in that you get 7 free photos every 7 days. There are a variety of nice ones but typically quite landscapey too if you know what I mean. And again snowy landscapes (even though I hate snow!) always catch my eye…
So there you have it – have fun filling those gallery walls!
