How to Decorate with Family Photos

A very nice way to decorate the walls in your house is to use your family pictures. Family photographs are part of your life, shows who you really are, and they are a decoration that’s definitely original. When we can’t buy an original art work piece to display in our house, family pictures are an alternative and original way to decorate.

The first thing you have to do to use your family pictures to decorate is to decide where you want to display them. You have to choose a place that is illuminated with natural and artificial light, but not so bright that the light reflects in the glass. I have a whole wall in my family room dedicated to pictures, and also I hang them in the wall in the stairs.

The second thing to do to display your family pictures is to decide how you will do it, the kind of frames you will use and the order of the display. I like to play with the frames to obtain a decorative effect; in my family room, all the frames from my pictures are white. Some were originally white, others, I painted them. My walls are painted in deep brown, so the white makes a good contrast. In the stairs, all the frames are antique styled picture frames; I bought most of them in yard sales and resale stores.

You can add to your family pictures display decoration an architectonical accent; you can use construction items to add dimension to your pictures’ display. I use white crown molding: I bought four thin and decorated two foot long poles, and I hang them as a frame in the wall. I hang my family pictures inside the crown molding frame.

Another idea is to buy the pre-made little square shelves they sell in Big Lots or Wal-Mart for very little money, and display the pictures inside; this would give a modern accent to your decoration.

If you want to have a rustic accent in your walls, you can hang the family pictures by the frames using twine; you’ll have to tie the twine by the hanger of the frames, and you can tie together three or more frames, attaching the first one to the wall, leaving the others hanging loose.

I saw one day a lovely family pictures display: a kind of chandelier made with photos; they used decorated thin chains attached to a low ceiling, and little oval frames were hanging from the chains with the family photos.

To have nice family photos displayed in your walls you will have to go trough all the old and new photographs you have in stock somewhere in your house. You can scan them, and fix them in your computer, using a photograph software program as Photo Vista or Roxio Photo Suit. I correct mistakes in the pictures, and add color or textures to my photographs using these easy programs. You can even step out the family pictures and try your artistic side taking pictures of flowers, gardens or animals, and play with them with the computer programs. That is a nice way to decorate with pictures as well. Making groups of pictures in black and white is beautiful, because it has a vintage accent. We can modify the pictures and change the colors, to divide them and display them by color groups.

Use your imagination to decorate with pictures, and you will have a wonderful and original decoration in your walls.