Dining Room Gallery Wall – Will This Work?

Here’s a reminder of what the wall looks like right now…

To have enough room for the table and chairs, the buffet has to go. I wondered if I’d even like the gallery wall without the buffet. The dark buffet seems to ground the whole design. So I had ChatGPT remove the buffet so that I could see if I’d even like the gallery wall without it. I was shocked, but I do still like it.

And then someone in the comments on a previous post suggested that I simply replace the TV with a framed mirror. That intrigued me, so I had ChatGPT replace the TV with the first large white framed mirror that I found on a Google search, which just happened to be the same mirror that I used in my closet. I wouldn’t use this same mirror, but it gives us an idea of what this might look like…

What I love about having a mirror there is that it would reflect more sunlight into the room.

But then I wondered if I could use my pinwheel art instead of a mirror. It’s too small right now, but I could reframe it so that it’s larger and has more white space. I put the drapery fabric over it so that I could see if it coordinates enough with the fabric. It does. The colors are pretty much the same.

It would need to be about three inches taller and three inches wider to fit the height of the space. But then I’d need to replace the four narrow shelves with shelves that are a bit wider to make it look right. That’s not a big deal, though, since these shelves are incredibly easy and inexpensive to make.

But that would give me an opportunity to get rid of this non-glare glass, which distorts the view of the artwork. I’ve regretted using this non-glare glass ever since I made this frame to go on this artwork.

And I could finally replace the glass with gallery glass so that there’s a clear view of the artwork.

Here’s a ChatGPT mockup of the wall with the pinwheel art, but obviously, it’s not quite right. Again, if I go this direction, there will be three additional inches of white background, both height and width, between the artwork and the frame. But you can see that the small shelves would have to be extended.

I also played around with a different wall color. First, I tried out a light pink. This one isn’t quite right. I’d need the fabric in hand before I can find a really light pink that coordinates with the actual fabric. But I still wanted to go ahead and see what a light pink might look like.

I know some of you are going to say, “But Matt’s one rule is no pink walls!” That’s true, but Matt is partially colorblind. If I were to paint the walls in here a really light, pale pink, he would see them as gray. His issue is more with bold hot pink colors. So I could get away with a really pale pink.

To give you an idea of how Matt sees color, he thought for the longest time that the curtains in the living room were gray. It wasn’t until about a year ago that he realized that they were pink. And that’s only because I asked him what color he thought they were, and when he answered “gray”, I told him they were pink. Had I not asked him, he would have continued thinking they were gray to this day.

So I could definitely get away with a soft pink. But I also tried out this color, which would basically be a color match to the background color on the drapery fabric.