You organized multiple difficult schedules, picked a beautiful photo session location, coordinated outfits, and looked your best for your new favorite family photos. Now what? Time to print them out and show them off! Sometimes the actual printing and hanging up of your photos can be the most difficult part, almost always done after weeks of procrastination. We’ve compiled three quick and easy ways to display family photos to make your life just a bit simpler!
Printing Your Photos
Prints & Frames
Creating traditional printed photos is still one of the best ways to keep hard-copy versions of your memories. Standard prints come in several sizes (5×7, 8×10, etc.) and finish options (glossy or matte). These small changes can determine the final look of the print. A glossy finish on a print makes vibrant colors pop a little more, while a matte finish assists in creating clearer definition. It’s all up to you and the style of your photos, but we personally prefer glossy. Once they are printed, go shopping for some cool frames! Try to stick to one frame style and color for a more uniform look, but it can be a lot of fun sorting through frames at a thrift shop to add to your random frame collection.
Canvases
Requesting your photos to be printed on canvas makes them look like the art pieces they truly are! Canvases can look more professional, giving your home an art gallery feel without being too stuffy. These prints are perfect for larger photos, especially your favorite family photo where you are all making crazy faces! Our studio walls are covered in canvas prints because they hold up over time, which is great for us as we are constantly rearranging our display walls and taking them with us to industry events.
Other Printing Options
There are so many unique ways to print and display your pictures now! For the artsier and more adventurous type of family, you can always try transferring your print onto drink coasters, sheet metal, pieces of wood, or fabric. There are many photo transfer tutorials online (yay Pinterest!) to help you figure out how to do it yourself or you can check out some of From the Hip Photo’s special printing jobs. Just ask 🙂
Time to Hang Your Photos
When it comes to easy ways to display family photos, pay attention to your wall shape first. Planning your photo gallery out before you start attaching things to the wall is very important and will save you a lot of headaches later. The way you arrange your pictures will vary greatly if you’re working with a very tall, vertical space compared to a diagonal wall section along a staircase. Displaying your family photos in larger spaces will allow you to use extended print formats, like canvases or frames with a large mat. Smaller spaces allow for denser, more creative layouts. The ideas below can help you figure out which would be the best fit for your space!
1. Grids & Gallery Walls
There are so many ways to arrange a grid of pictures to create a pleasing gallery wall, which makes them one of the most appealing and easy ways to display family photos. Whether the pictures are framed and matted or printed on canvas, creating a grid will create a statement art piece on your wall for everyone to enjoy.
There are two main ways to make a grid-style display, so let’s get started!
One way is to print all your pictures out at the same size, place them in similar frames, and then line them up evenly to create a sort of checkboard grid. Many people like to do this with square pictures, but rectangular photos will work just as well! To make this more unique, choose brightly colored frames or detailed frames.
The second gallery wall idea is done by staggering the differently sized prints in a way that is not perfectly aligned but more pieced together. This will give the grid more of an artsy look but will take planning. When hanging this style of the grid, we recommend laying the photos on the ground first to make sure you like the spacing and organization. Because the visual interest of the art will be the staggering lines, it is generally a better idea to use similar frames that have less variation between them, unless you are going for a bold wall statement. We like to mix frames with printed canvases to give our photo grid more texture and contrast.
 2. Straight Lines
Displaying your photos in a straight line will look very professional and can fit better in smaller spaces. When hanging pictures in a line, think about a theme to balance out the photos. They all could be taken at the same location to tie together a common color or maybe they are all printed on canvases instead of in picture frames. Â When they’re close together, the differences will become obvious and can detract from the beauty of the pictures. Photo lines work best on smaller walls with furniture or windows framing the display space. While all these easy ways to display family photos look great, this one also lets you change out the pictures easily without creating more holes in the wall, which is an added bonus!
3. Variety
If you’re hoping to have a truly unique and eye-catching display of family photos, consider switching out print types, color combinations, and widths of frames and mats. When done correctly, the variety is still cohesive and creates an added sense of art to emphasize the gallery wall. But why just limit your photo galleries to family portraits? Add in your child’s artwork, your Instagram photos, cool travel polaroids, and everything in between!
No matter how you end up displaying your family photos, they will be treasured memories for years to come. We hope that these three easy ways to display family photos have inspired some ideas of how to show off your own beautiful pictures in your home!
