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How to Create a Simple Teen Photo Wall

Learn how to decorate teen bedrooms with photos for a simple but meaningful gallery photo wall. Easy and budget-friendly DIY project for kids.

Last year my daughter, Emma put together a fun poster board photo collage to hang in the corner of her room.

She wanted to add more pictures of her friends (and a few family pics too) but wanted to do something different this time.

She asked me if she could hang the prints directly on the wall.

Uh oh!

If you looked back at the previous photo project you know that I didn’t want to hang a bunch of pictures all over the walls because I didn’t want to damage the freshly painted walls.

Well…now it’s been over a year since I’ve painted her room so I gave her the green light to create a simple teen photo wall.

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Choose a Wall for the Photos

blank wall around closet door before picture

The first step in this project is to chose a wall or space to create your photo gallery.

Emma decided to move two pieces of artwork that hung on either side of her closet door and use the space around the door for her photo wall.

Gather Photos to Hang

printed 4x6 photos spread out on bed

Next, you need to gather all the photos you want to use.

Emma uses her phone to take all of her pictures.

So she created a separate album in her photos app on her iPhone to put all the pictures she wanted to print.

Then we were able to easily upload that folder to order the 4×6 prints.

Once we received the prints she spread them out on her bed so that we could figure out how we wanted to layout the photo wall.

She didn’t worry about the orientation of the prints and included both horizontal & vertical prints.

So we needed to determine how many prints would fit in which orientation on either side of the door.

girl adjusting photos on gallery wall

And honestly, we just started at the bottom and worked our way up.

One wall was a bit wider than the other on the sides of her door so we adjusted as we went.

She wanted to leave a bit of space between the pictures so it appeared to look like a grid.

close up of photo wall around closet door

Adhering Photos to the Wall

girl adding photos to simple teen photo wall

We used permanent double-stick tape to adhere the prints to the wall.

Just one small piece in each corner of every photo was all that was needed. It was pretty easy and went fairly quickly once we got going.

I helped Emma hang them as she chose which picture went next until we filled the walls around the closet door.

bedroom with corner of bed and mirror on wall with photo wall surronding closet door

And as you can see here…she’s super happy with the outcome!

girl standing with arms in air laughingin front of closet door with photos on wall around door

Sometimes as the lead decorator of our home it’s hard to let go of the picture-perfect magazine-worthy image I have in my mind of what I want a space to look like and just be a mom who makes her kid super happy!

I mean what’s better than that?

girl standing with arms in air in front of closet door with photos on wall around door

Update

I’m back with an update on this photo wall because I want to be honest with you all. About a week after completing this project the pictures started falling off the wall. So we just rehung all the prints with Command Strips for posters. We used 2 command strips per photo to be sure they stay up this time but only time will tell. Stay tuned!

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