Home › Buying guides › Hanging and display › How to plan a gallery wall

How to plan a gallery wall

Keep one gap between every frame and treat the whole group as a single rectangle centred at about 57 inches. Sources give 2 to 3 inches for grids and gallery walls and 1.5 to 2 inches for tight layouts, so the real choice is consistency. Lay the layout out on paper templates first (CustomPictureFrames suggests 30 to 60 minutes for a 6 to 9 piece wall).

Diagram: equal gaps in a 3 by 2 grid. Frames drawn 30 units wide with an 8 unit gap; schematic.

Spacing by layout

Layout	Gap	Source
Tight grid or minimal	1.5 to 2 in	CPFG
Standard, most walls	2.5 to 4 in	CPFG
Generous, large rooms	4 to 8 in	CPFG
Gallery wall or grid	2 to 3 in	P4A
Linear grouping	3 to 4 in	P4A and CPFG (hallway)
Salon style	1 to 2 in (P4A); denser at the centre, sparser at the edges (CPFG)	P4A, CPFG

Steps

Lay the frames on a large surface, arrange them and photograph the layout.
Cut paper to each frame's size and number each to match the photo.
Tape the templates to the wall, step back and adjust.
Mark each hook position on its template, drive the hook through the paper, tear the paper off and hang the frame.

How wide will a row be?

Total width = count x frame width + (count minus 1) x gap. The table works that out for equal frames. Use it to check a row against the wall width before you buy.

Frames in row	Frame width (in)	Gap (in)	Row width (in)	Row width (cm)
3	8	2	28	71.1
4	8	2	38	96.5
5	8	2	48	121.9
3	8	3	30	76.2
4	8	3	41	104.1
5	8	3	52	132.1
3	12	2	40	101.6
4	12	2	54	137.2
5	12	2	68	172.7
3	12	3	42	106.7
4	12	3	57	144.8
5	12	3	72	182.9
3	16	2	52	132.1
4	16	2	70	177.8
5	16	2	88	223.5
3	16	3	54	137.2
4	16	3	73	185.4
5	16	3	92	233.7

Sources

CustomPictureFrames: gallery wall design guide (fetched 2026-11-12)
Passion4Art: artwork hanging heights (fetched 2026-11-12)
Framebridge: what is the right height to hang a frame (fetched 2026-11-12)

Figures from these pages are paraphrased and re-checked on 2026-11-12. Where two sources disagree, both figures are shown. Hardware and wall products vary, so follow the pack instructions.