Displaying Your Portraits

February 22, 2010 | Filed Under Client Share, Ideas | Leave a Comment 

I was dusting the house this weekend and of course had to move some photos off of the entry table to dust it and the photos. Then I moved on over to a cute little antique chair I have in the living room and moved the portrait off of it to dust it. Then I thought about y’all. I wondered how you display your portraits in your homes.

So many of us just do things the way they’ve always been done. We hang our framed portraits on the wall, in the obvious locations, and we scatter smaller sized photos throughout the house on a bookshelf or something similar. I’m not saying there is anything wrong with this – we all do it and it’s okay, but what about the not so obvious locations?

 I’ve stepped out over the last few years and tried to be different with where I display portraits in my home. For example, I have an old dresser in my kitchen. Sounds weird to some of you, I’m sure, but we bought my husband’s grandparent’s old farmhouse (built by his grandfather!) and there was some furniture still in the house at the time. Well, one of the pieces was this old dresser. Since I have this really long and skinny kitchen with not a whole lot of drawers and cabinets I moved that dresser in there to use it as a place to store cookie sheets, rolling pins, casserole dishes, etc. I utilize the top of the dresser as a space to display old family portraits. I have framed prints of my dad as a child, a portrait of my grandfather that he sent to my grandmother when he was in the war signed, “With all my love, Daddy”, as well as one of my great-grandfather.

As mentioned above, I have a framed photo of my son sitting on an antique chair in my living room. It’s cracked and not safe for someone to sit on, so I decided I’d remedy that by putting a photo in the seat! I also have a small photo of our son framed and hanging above a couple of light switches in another room.

We all know that Pottery Barn has some neat ideas in their catalogs as well. I have a client who has created her own family gallery of her two kids on either side of their fireplace and it looks fabulous! So tell me, what do you do with your images? Leave a comment, or email me your ideas (and pictures too!) and you might just get featured here on the blog!