How To Create A Collage Wall

Disclosure: Any post may contain links to my shop or affiliate links, which means I may receive a commission from any purchase you make. All opinions about products I use are my own. Read the full disclosure HERE.

My entire pregnancy, I spent about 98% of my time on the recliner in my living room. The wall opposite of my chair was my view for a long 9 months. I dreamed up several different ideas for the wall during that time, but finally landed on a collage wall. I had this planned in my head for so long! Finally last summer I made it happen. I am so happy with how it turned out! I can’t wait to show you the final project on Friday, but first I’m going to take you through each step to get there.

Step #1: Gather up all the frames you want to use.

Step #2: Measure the space on your wall you want to use, then measure an open space on the floor of the same dimensions. Use a barrier to know the boundary. I suggest masking or painters tape, though my couch and rug happened to fit my dimensions and helped form my boundary.

Measure a space on the wall and floor

Step #3: Play around with laying out your frames within the measured space on the floor. I like to call this “playing Tetris with the frames”. Get a friend or spouse to help during this phase. Just keep re-arranging the frames until you get a configuration you like!

Experiment with layout on the floor first

Step #4: Take a picture and draw a diagram of the configuration. If your collage wall is going to have multiple colors of frames, decide that now while the frames are laying out. I suggest writing the color on a post-it note and putting it right on the frame.

label paint colors with post-it notes

Step #5: Paint and prepare your frames for the collage wall: I wrote an entire post HERE about how to prep the frames and HERE about how to add burlap matting to the frames.

Step #6: Prepare to hang the frames on the wall. Put them back on the floor in the same configuration. Use your original picture for reference to recreate the same layout.

draw the collage on paper

Step #7: Starting hanging the pictures on the wall. For my entire wall, I only used 6 nails, because some frames were too heavy for the 3M picture mounting things or had a fuzzy back and the sticky things wouldn’t stick. Using the 3M hanging things made it so easy to place each frame exactly where I wanted it. Start in the top left or right corner and go left to right, top to bottom. Just do your best, it doesn’t have to be perfect to be beautiful!

I use those command strips to put up the frames