A gallery wall done well looks effortless. A gallery wall done badly looks like you ran out of Blu Tack halfway through. The difference almost always comes down to planning, not taste — get the layout right on the floor before a single nail goes in the wall, and the rest tends to fall into place.
Adjusting a gallery wall after it's already up
It's rare to get a gallery wall exactly right on the first attempt, and that's fine. Small adjustments — nudging a frame an inch, swapping two prints' positions once you've lived with the layout for a week — are completely normal and usually improve the result. Treat the first hanging as a strong starting point rather than a final, unchangeable decision, and don't be afraid to make small tweaks once you've actually seen it in daylight and evening light both.
Tools worth having before you start
Beyond a spirit level and tape measure, a few cheap extras make the whole process noticeably easier: a pencil for marking hook positions lightly before committing, picture-hanging strips for lighter unframed prints where you'd rather avoid nail holes altogether, and a helper to check the layout from across the room while you hold pieces in place. None of this is essential, but it removes a lot of the guesswork that makes gallery walls feel more daunting than they need to be.
Why gallery walls work particularly well for football
Football lends itself to gallery walls more naturally than a lot of other subjects, simply because a single club offers so many different visual angles: the ground itself, the chants sung inside it, specific seasons, specific players. That variety means you can build a genuinely varied, layered wall without ever leaving your own club's colours — something that's much harder to do with, say, a single landscape photograph or a generic pattern print.
Pick a theme before you pick prints
The strongest football gallery walls have a clear organising idea, rather than being a random assortment of whatever you own. That could be one club across multiple prints — a stadium shot next to a chant print, like the Emirates Stadium print alongside One-Nil to The Arsenal — or it could be a set of different clubs if the wall lives in a shared space like a games room or a pub-style home bar.
Mix sizes rather than matching them exactly
Three identical A3 prints in a neat row is fine, but it's the safest option rather than the most interesting one. A layout with one larger anchor piece (A2 or A1) and two or three smaller supporting prints (A4 or A3) tends to look more considered and less like a template. Exact sizing for each print is on our size guide, which is worth checking before you commit to a layout.
Plan it on the floor first
This is the step almost everyone skips, and it's the one that matters most. Lay your prints out on the floor in front of the wall, roughly where you think they'll go, and live with it for a day before hanging anything. Gaps that look fine on a screen often look wrong in person, and it's far easier to shuffle prints on a carpet than to fill in extra nail holes.
Keep spacing consistent
As a general rule, leave two to three inches between frames — enough that each print reads as its own piece, not so much that the group stops looking connected. If you're mixing framed and unframed pieces, try to keep that consistent across the whole group rather than switching halfway through; it's a small detail but it's the one that makes a gallery wall look either intentional or accidental.
Framed, unframed, or both
An all-framed gallery wall looks the most finished and works best in a living room or hallway that guests actually see. An unframed set is more forgiving if you like to add to it over time — new prints slot in easily without needing to match a frame style, which suits a wall that's meant to grow rather than being finished on day one.
Don't be afraid of an odd number
Three, five or seven prints tend to look more natural than an even number, largely because it avoids a perfectly symmetrical, slightly stiff arrangement. If you're starting from scratch, three is a sensible number to begin with — enough to feel like a proper gallery wall, without the commitment of filling an entire wall in one go.
Working around furniture and fixtures
Light switches, radiators and door frames rarely sit where you'd choose for a perfectly symmetrical layout, so most gallery walls need to work around at least one obstruction. Rather than fighting it, use it: an asymmetric layout that flows around a light switch or leaves a deliberate gap near a doorway often looks more natural than a forced grid that's clearly been squeezed to avoid the obstacle. Measure the usable space properly before you start rather than assuming a wall is a blank canvas.
A simple template if you're starting from zero
If you don't already have a layout in mind, a reliable starting point is one A2 print as the anchor, positioned slightly off-centre, with two A4 prints arranged in an L-shape below or beside it. This gives you a clear hierarchy — one dominant piece, two supporting ones — without needing to eyeball a more complex grid. Once that's up and settled, additional prints can be added around the edges over time without disrupting the original three.
Tools that make hanging easier
A proper spirit level and a tape measure will save more frustration than almost any other part of this process. Painter's tape is worth using to mark out frame positions directly on the wall before committing to a nail — it lets you step back, check the spacing looks right in person, and adjust without leaving extra holes. For anything framed and glazed, picture hooks rated for the frame's weight matter more than people expect; a heavy A1 frame on a single small pin is a recipe for it slipping over time.
Common mistakes worth avoiding
Hanging everything at standard eye height regardless of frame size is one of the most common gallery wall mistakes — a large anchor piece often looks better slightly lower than you'd expect, since your eye naturally reads it as the centre of the group. Another common error is spacing frames too far apart in an attempt to fill a large wall; a tighter cluster with room to expand later almost always reads better than a scattered, oversized layout from day one.
For more on choosing the prints themselves before you get to the layout stage, our guide to football wall art ideas for your home and our piece on football prints for a man cave are both worth reading first. Browse the full wall art prints collection to start building yours.