The ultimate guide to WALL DECOR.

Wall decor. What is it? Nobody knows. And yet, we spend a lot of time worrying about it. I spend a lot of time stressing about wall decor. It's the eighth wonder of the world, I would say. Impossible to figure out. What do I do with that giant wall? What are shapes that are good? Why does this wall look so stupid? Why does wall decor matter? Ultimately, it doesn't. In the grand scheme of things, it doesn't. But I do spend a lot of time thinking about it. And it's one of the most common design conundrums I hear people write in about. So we're gonna talk about it today. And I think we're gonna get some real good ideas that's gonna help you problem solve what might be off with a wall you're trying to fill. Some ideas of different ways to think about wall decor. Some hacks, because wall decor gets so expensive. And then the second half of the video, I'm going to share with you some really, really cool, really easy DIY ideas for home decor that I do all the time. And then later on, we're gonna go thrifting. And I'm gonna show you some low-budget thrifting hacks to get some really cool, unique wall art. It's gonna be a great video. And we're gonna be doing one of these little crafts of turning a frame like this into this. It is so easy. I'm telling you, I only do crafts that are idiot-proof. Okay? And this one is. I'm so excited. I am so excited. Okay, here we go. Wall decor is such a stumper, and it has been for centuries. Such a stumper that now people are just hanging these macrame things on their walls. And I'm sorry for this hot take, but I hate this. I hate this. I don't hate you, but I hate the macrame wall hanging. It's a belligerent opinion that I stand by. Let's take it down. But the spirit behind the macrame wall decor is not a bad one. It's actually good, which is getting beyond picture frames. One of the biggest things people overlook with their wall decor is how to add dimensionality, something sculptural, something more 3D than just frame, frame, frame, frame, frame, frame, frame. The room starts falling flat if you don't. So I like to look around my space and find things. They don't even have to specifically be wall decor. I have hung a very pretty decorative wooden duster on my wall specifically because it adds dimensionality. So thinking about the ways you can incorporate sculptural objects into your home is gonna make such a difference. You want that variety of depths. Another great way to bring in depth variation with your wall decor, of course, is our shelves. But you don't have to just go with a basic shelf. You can find a shelf that is truly a piece of art, a sculpture in itself. You don't need a ton of these. If you get one really beautiful shelf, it can be a piece of art in itself. If you're really committed to your macrame, I'm gonna give you an alternative that I think can be really beautiful, which is hanging some actual tapestries. Sometimes you see really lovely hand-woven rugs, tapestries, that are really works of art in themselves. The reason why I think a tapestry or a framed rug can be really fun is because they solve the problem of planes. A lot of times when you look around a room, all our artworks, a bunch of frames, are hung all at the same height. Now you can hear advice from some people online saying like, art should be hung at this, you know, five and a half feet off the floor, la, la, la, la, la, to be at eyesight. First of all, you don't know how tall I am, dog. And all my guests actually come in different heights. So I don't really get the point of that. And also having art hung all at one height, it just feels very flat to me. Again, you know, we wanna work in depth and we also wanna have variation in height. If you're looking around your space and it's like artwork, artwork, artwork all at this level, something that can break it up in a really great way is having a long piece. And I will also say these things can get expensive. So a hack that I love is just picking out a wallpaper that you love. You can buy like one roll of wallpaper and that is going to be so much more affordable than saving up for the like giant, giant artwork, which I also love, but yes, they can be expensive. So getting something like that framed with a mat around it can be a beautiful way to break up the monotony of all our art kind of hung at the same height. Something else that I will always be in love with, speaking of heights, is just hanging art so low to the ground that it makes people mad. There are just no rules. There are no rules. And I really love to see some designers hanging a piece of artwork just in the randomest place. So thinking outside the box, like look around your space and see what box you've chosen for yourself. What rule you're subconsciously abiding by that like art has to be this way and how can you break it? That's gonna bring a lot more depth and layering to your space. It's very easy to get lost in just like wall decor, wall decor, buying more wall decor, hang more wall decor, and you might have overlooked actually considering how you wanna treat the wall itself. Let me explain. Consider adding texture in some way. It might not be that you need more wall decor up there. If you just go and add like a grass cloth wallpaper or there's like peel and stick versions of bead board, things like that, something that adds a little texture to the wall is gonna take care of it like 90% of the work. And then you can hang like an artwork or two up there. Same goes for adding your wall moldings, picture frame moldings, things like that. But of course that takes a little more work. As soon as you get that up on the wall, just a little bit of interest, a little bit of variation in texture, that takes care of a lot of the heavy lifting for you. In a bedroom, something you can do behind like this large empty wall behind your bed, easy, simple lift that's gonna be super impactful is just doing like a little picture rail and painting the rail and beneath it. That adds color, it adds dimension, it breaks it up into sections. It's got you like 80% of the way there and you can hang up a little frame, call it a day. Something that's really important to think about though that you might have overlooked with your wall decor is where are you giving the eye a break? You need a palette cleanser. Otherwise it can be overwhelming and if there's too much clutter, too much going on, then everything that is on the wall loses a little bit of its potency. So when you leave the negative space and leave room for a break, that break, that negative space around your wall art actually becomes the frame. Think of that as the like macro frame for your art and the frame is important. There's a reason framing is a thing because it draws attention and it draws like a center of gravity and an anchor to the artwork. Okay, what do we do with that giant empty wall? Probably one of the biggest questions I get on my channel and a stumper for me too. Like I, listen, I don't have all the answers. There's plenty of art and wall decor hung up in my home. That's like not very well done. I'm not saying that I do it perfectly but these are some of the things I like to think about to try and mix it up and get closer to problem solving. The big giant empty wall is one of the biggest stumpers. Of course, you can always go with like a giant artwork. That's kind of the way I went in my living room above my sofa, giant empty wall. And so I couldn't afford a giant piece of art to fill it so I made one. I made something simple, something that was idiot proof. I still kind of messed up the frame. Everyone on the channel hates it. I don't care, I'm never fixing it. And it's also actually the thing that most people love when they walk into my space. Another really easy way to kind of hack your way to a more affordable giant artworks is doing sets, like two large sets, three large sets that can kind of span the length of your wall but they don't have to be one continuous thing. I talked about framing a wallpaper sample that you love. I've seen this done with like Gracie wallpaper. Gracie wallpaper is this exorbitantly, absurdly expensive hand-painted custom-made wallpaper but I've seen people like frame just two slices of it and then you have a set of two artworks. You can do this with really any wallpaper, any print that you love. Could be posters, of course, but I think on a large wall, thinking about sets or trios, make it a little triptych can be a really good way to fill that up. Alternatively, the best thing you can do to fill up a big wall is break it into sections. The thing that makes this big empty wall the most difficult is that there's literally nothing breaking it up. There's no architectural detail, like a wall popping out, even if there was like a wall popping out and some inset, that would be easier to fill. And of course, you don't have to go and add molding to your wall to break it up. Another thing you can do, break it up using like taller pieces of furniture. So maybe you've got like the wall flanked in two taller pieces of furniture, and then it leaves a little bit, kind of a more manageable piece of wall in the middle that you could put like a frame or two in. You might be able to divide the wall up with paint. It depends. Basically thinking about any way you can break up the space into sections, visually, whatever way you can is gonna make your job so much easier. Okay, gallery walls, right? We love a gallery wall. Gallery walls are actually a trend in a way. The way that we've been doing them in recent years, that is a trend. We haven't always done it that way. And I think it's fair to expect that we'll eventually kind of sidle away from that as well. But there's a bunch of different ways you can do a gallery wall, ways that will kind of break the trend. One of the main ways to do a gallery wall is to have everything lined up at right angles, all the corners matching up in different ways. But one of the ways that I like to do it, first of all, it's like easier on you and on your measuring tape, and can bring kind of a different offbeat energy is by doing what designer Rita Koenig calls cutting off the highways. So the spaces, the alleys, the highways, as she calls them in between your frames, make sure they're always interrupted and it can have a really cool effect. It's gonna make it feel a little more eclectic and a little less overly manicured. What's great about that is things don't have to be precise, but I think the key here when hanging that gallery wall is to keep those highways, even if you're breaking them up, keep them moderately the same width so that like the streets themselves are the same width, even though you're interrupting them with lots of turns. People ask all the time about how to hang a gallery wall, and there's so many tools and services that help you. And personally, I don't like to use any of them. I just like to hang it up there with my best guess, measuring it by hand. By measure, I mean I'm using my finger. I'm not using a measuring tape. And if it's off, I take it out and I move the nail a little bit. Yes, this leaves more holes in my wall behind the frames. You can cover them up in a hot second if you want to, and usually you don't even see them. They're behind the frame. But to me, that's very worth it so that the endeavor of hanging a gallery wall doesn't make your back hurt, like isn't migraine-inducing. It should be fun. You should experiment. And what's great about that is that you actually then have the opportunity to surprise yourself, to hang something up in a wonky way that you then realize you actually really like. I would say the biggest thing I would try and stay away from with gallery walls is leaving the pieces too spaced out. You lose the tension. You lose the energy. It just starts to feel a little scattered to me, so I do prefer to keep them a little closer together. That being said, I have not done that correctly in plenty of my gallery walls here. So it's not a make or break thing, but it's just, it's in general a preference. Let's mix it up. How can we bring some variation into our space? We've put up all the picture frames a person could ever put up. We need to bring in some variation. Something that can help break up all the frames, mixing in a mirror, mixing in a weird color frame. I feel like a pop of a weird color frame, doesn't have to match your decor, can be a piece of art on its own. I've seen a really fun trend recently, and this is a trend, so it will probably feel like kind of lived out eventually, but this trend of like folded ribbon put up on the wall, and you don't have to do this specific thing, but what I do love about it is that it's like original, it's unique, it can be free form, organic shapes to break up all the rectangles of your frames, and something that pops out of the wall. You can do this also with items from nature that you've collected on trips, of course with plants, that's why plants are great on the wall, because they bring a little bit of dimensionality, and a little bit more of an organic shape. Okay, a couple things I like to do to save money on wall decor and still have custom pieces. Number one, framing postcards. Postcards are great. This guy is a postcard in a thrifted frame. I think a friend got this for me, this postcard for me in a museum. Museum gift shops, travel gift shops, or wherever, they can have such beautiful designs. You know, this is probably five bucks, and I promise you, a print that was not a postcard of this thing, the same size, would have been like $40, $50. It's mayhem, and just putting it in a thrifted frame. I really, really love that. I have postcards hung all over. Other thing I'm loving right now, and I can't shut up about on my channel, is pressing flowers. These are all pressed flowers. I wish you could smell them. I don't know if it's a good smell. It kind of smells like a hamster cage. These are just flowers I have pressed. I just press them in a book, leave them, forget about them, come back to them, and you have these beautiful pieces of artwork. I like to frame them. Look at this cutie guy. So pretty, and you can arrange them all different ways. And what I'm really loving right now is taking a little plant from Trips. So my boyfriend Justin and I recently went on a trip to Savannah, Georgia, and they have this plant there called Star Jasmine. And I just love this little plant, so I took one, pressed it in a book, and now I framed this in a custom frame that I did that I'm gonna show you how to do. And this is like a little memento from my trip. Doesn't cost you nothing, dog. Speaking of this frame, this is the coolest thing I've ever seen. This frame started out like this, and I didn't invent this craft. I saw it first done by Shannon Clare, who's a great designer. I'm gonna share her Instagram. And I've seen other people do this on Pinterest. So I'm gonna show you how you can make this kind of custom frame with any print, any wallpaper you can find. It's super fun. Let's go thrift some items and do a couple little home decor, wall decor crafts. Listen, this is not a fashion channel, but I'm gonna force everyone to look at my outfit. I'm feeling kind of Parisian, but I want applause for this outfit immediately. Shoes, everyone has asked, Cezanne. Skirt, Cezanne. I'm a Cezanne. Hoe, nail, Everlane. Let's kick it, dog. Right now, we are gonna go to a stationery store in D.C. that I love and pick up some pretty little art prints we can frame. It's gonna be a beautiful day to be alive. Not gonna stop making with my outfit. That's perfect. Thank you so much. Have a great day. Love it. It says Gustave Collier-Botte. George Hendrick Breitner. I love it. And then I also got the dragonflies. I love these. Instant, instant art. Here we go. Part one complete. Now we are off to the thrift store. Quick pit stop to gas. Thank you to Upside. Videos like this are made possible by sponsors like Upside. I use Upside every time I get gas or groceries. It's a cash back app that partners with over 30,000 businesses and 25,000 gas stations across 48 states plus D.C. It's real cash back. It's not points. It's not loyalty rewards. I earn real, literal dollars back every time I get groceries or gas. It's a natural fit to the things I'm already doing and it's really easy to use. You check in at the business, pay as usual with a credit card or debit card. You just can't use cash and you get paid. The cash appears in your Upside account and you can cash out at any time through a bank transfer, PayPal, Amazon, Starbucks, whatever. Top Upside earners make as much as 300 bucks a month. To find out how much you could earn, click the link in the description to download Upside and use code CAROLINE to get an extra 25 cents back for every gallon on your first tank of gas. Or you can scan the QR code here. And it's really easy to use. That's it. Boom. Made it. Mecca. 16 frames, a dollar each, 16 bucks. The key, you wanna look for some flat surfaces. Nothing that has too much detailing on it for what we're gonna do. And we got one more stop. Wow, wow, wow, wow. Made it. People are staring at me in the parking lot. Okay, JK. Michaels didn't have that many good options, but I ended up going to the other Mecca. Paper Source. They really had the right paper for this. So if you're gonna do this craft, I'd suggest Paper Source because they have the individual prints of paper. You can just get individual wrapping papers. I'm feeling good. Here we go. Okay, babies. I am home with all my frames and we are gonna make something beautiful right now. All right, what we're gonna do, I think I'd like to take this guy and we're gonna use this frame, but we're gonna make it sexy because I don't like this. I will say this, I don't usually like a black frame almost anywhere. Personal opinion, come at me. This frame, this postcard, found this wallpaper, which I love. And I think I like how it pairs with the red, actually. I think that's gonna be a real cool pop. Take apart the frame. We're gonna start with covering the frame. So let's lay our wallpaper down. You can go face down. Let's cut this bad boy. And we're working with beautiful Mod Podge. Turn over to the front side and you can be pretty sloppy with it. Okay, we gonna flip it over. Beautiful. And it dries relatively easily, relatively fast. Probably also have to do this. Pulling it tight. And you wanna rub out the inevitable wrinkles that will form. Don't stress too much about the wrinkles, but as much as you can, rub it out. Pulling it tight, tight, tight. We're keeping it tight. We're rubbing it out. We're keeping it tight. We're rubbing it out. In the words of Martha Stewart, we're gonna cut off this excess. The only thing that's tricky about this is the corners. Sweet. We're gonna finish wrapping the rest around. And you can get the Mod Podge everywhere because there is gonna be Mod Podge everywhere. Pull it tight for Martha. And we turn it over and it's looking cute, but it's not really looking like anything. Okay, let's cut off these excess corners. And then we're gonna go to the front. I'm just gonna slice this open. This part's kind of fun. I'm using just like an X-Acto blade. And you wanna leave a little extra, like the frame ends right here, but you wanna leave a little extra so you can wrap it around. And then on the corner, I like to go diagonally into the corner. And you'll see why. Don't cut my finger off. Wow! Okay, we got some excess on the back, so I actually wanna take off the back excess. So remember, this side is the back, so it doesn't have to be perfectly done. I never pass up an opportunity where I can be sloppy. I'm just sloppy. I'm sloppy and I'm lazy. And that doesn't mean I can't do crafts. Sloppy, lazy people can do crafts too. Okay, so that's the back. Okay, now we're just gonna fold this excess in. So I'm gonna slop a lot on the sides. This is the fun part. Now we tuck. We tuck and we press. We turn and we press. We keep it tight. It's tight. It's tight, we keep it tight. Okay, okay. And the way Mod Podge works is you also put a layer on top. The layer on top is gonna like seal it as well. So you can just go through and seal it up and it kind of soaks through the paper to make it stay. Okay, time to flip it over. Oh my God, how pretty. Oh my freaking goodness, how pretty. Wow, let's podge it out. This is gonna be the sealant. So you do wanna get all sides of it. It's a sealant, but it's also a glue. It helps everything stick down. I mean, it's just like amazing. Mod Podge, God, I love Mod Podge. So yeah, I'm just gonna fold in the corners and just smooth them down. It's pretty perfect. We're gonna let that dry. And in the meantime, we're gonna do the matting. So this is the mat it comes with. You could either leave this white and do a mat, do like the wallpaper on the inside, or I'm gonna wallpaper this. Easy peasy, y'all. Easy as hell out here. Ugh, I think this is like my favorite craft. Such a satisfying result, and it's not that hard. It's gonna be fine. Okay, so I probably should've got two sheets of paper. Oh, well. Okay, so this is gonna be cool, but think about how much cooler it would've been if I'd bought the correct amount of paper, hmm? Pop it out, dog. Yeah! So it's gonna be like this. It's gonna go there, and I'm just gonna do the best I can. What more could I ever do? Look at this. Look how stinkin' pretty that is. Are you absolutely kidding me? Wow, wow. Wow, I am so stinkin' happy, though. Are you kidding me? I love this so much. This is so cool. Okay, that's amazing. We're artists now. I'm gonna do a couple more, just because I love to do a time lapse and show you some more options. Here we go. Wow, okay, I'm in love with all of these. You guys have to try this at home. You have to. If you try it, let me know how it goes. I love it. Okay, I probably wouldn't put these together in a gallery wall, and this one really stands out as being intense. I love putting a really classical piece with some modern pops and stuff. I like the contrast. This would have to find a special place for it to work, though, but I do really, really love it. Let me tell you what. I am feeling so proud of these crafts. I love finding a craft, especially for wall decor, that's practical, I'll actually use it, it actually looks good, it doesn't look like a kindergartner made it, and it didn't take that much effort or money. TLDR, I think the most important thing you can do when trying to problem-solve your wall decor is figure out what subconscious rules and restrictions you're working within, and how can you break out of them? What feels unacceptable to do? Are you never allowed to hang art near the floor? Can it never be that tall? Are you not allowed to put a teapot somewhere? It shouldn't be. What's a color that wouldn't match the rest of your decor? Those little surprises are what is gonna breathe life and interest into your space. It's nice to have things cohesive, but when they get too cohesive, too matchy-matchy, it actually falls flat, and nothing feels that potent or interesting. It's your home. It should excite you. It should feel interesting. It's yours to experiment with. Don't let it be something that stresses you out. Put holes in that dang wall, no one's gonna die. I promise you that. Yeah, just get comfortable experimenting, trying some things, and being okay with taking them down after a few weeks if you don't like them. I do it all the time, all the time. I hope this was a helpful video. Send it to somebody who is struggling with their wall decor, and I'll see you soon.