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Maximise the impact of curated photo frame displays.

Switch up your gallery wall by thinking beyond a photograph, print or painting and embrace some creative ways to personalise your space and transform bland walls. Whether in your living room, hallway, or along the staircase, gallery walls give us the opportunity to personalise our decor with a curated display. If you fancy giving your display a mini makeover, all you need is good photo frames, creativity, and your imagination.

Here are seven alternative ways to fill a photo frame.

'The ease with which we can alter our gallery wall displays lends itself to mirroring seasonal change. And now the landscape is awash with daffodils and forget-me-nots, we can invite spring to the house with the addition of dried flowers to our photo frames,' says Kayleigh Jordan, interior specialist at Photo Frames and Art.

Introduce pattern, colour and shapes with a selection of flowers. Why not gather tulips, crocuses, and snakes head fritillary for a wonderful dry flower assembly? Whatever you choose, pressed flowers will be perfect for a spring/summer wall update.

With this type of curated display, choose simple frames with little or no embellishment, in solid black or white, suggests Kayleigh.

Another great way to add character to a gallery wall is by framing maps. Replicas of ancient lands and lost landscapes invite new worlds into the home, while modern maps of desirable places awakens wanderlust.

Think of nautical charts and open sea maps, which work especially well in office spaces, while topographic maps will suit modern interiors. 'An ensemble of thematic maps suit rooms and homes with distinct colour themes since they are often monochrome or two toned,' adds Kayleigh.

For photo frames, distressed frames with a pre-owned feel can work particularly well with map-themed wall galleries.

From iconic cover stars to limited edition covers and artful photography that's worthy of a Cover of the Year award, magazine covers make great photo displays – just like photographs they can evoke time, place, and memory. For example, if you want a gallery of vintage Vogue covers you can choose the covers based on a particular style, era, designer, or model, for instance.

Again, less is more here and you should let the magazine cover be the focal point, so choose plain photo frames to display these.

Why not frame notes and letters from family, friends and loved and lost ones? These can work brilliantly in rooms across the home, depending on the nature and style of the letter and its author.

Displaying these in frames takes letters from forgotten memory into an every day reminder of what and who we cherish. Including original envelopes will be both sentimentally and aesthetically pleasing.

A more playful gallery wall might include post-it notes, whimsical doodles and back-of-a-napkin scribbles, suggests Kayleigh. 'These types of displays lend themselves to brighter, more playful rooms,' she says.

Framing treasured mementos is primarily about recalling people, place and time. This can be sparked by cinema tickets, bracelets, certificates, diary pages or trinkets. Whatever you possess that holds memories can be presented dutifully in photo frames.

'Naturally, older objects will lend themselves to vintage-style frames and quirkier items are best presented in cleaner, simpler frames,' suggests Kayleigh.

Adverts, posters or signs from the past have a very characterful, off-centre quality and could be ideal for enlivening the least-visited rooms in the home.

'Like magazine covers, vintage adverts have the pleasing trait of containing the finesse of beautiful photography, design and lettering – and the variety of vintage adverts available means you can give considerable thought to how you would like to thematically curate the gallery,' says Kayleigh. 'A good tip is to think of a brand with a strong advertising history, one that suits what is contained in the room, and acquire adverts that highlight their colourful, characterful history through the decades.'

Kayleigh says adverts from the golden era of advertising (1960s – 80s) work especially well in contemporary, leaner frames. Combining them gives an immediate and vivid uplift to a room.

'Poetry is the option I often recommend for living spaces,' says Kayleigh, who suggests using pages from poetry collections, rather than purchasing poems in the form of posters and prints. 'My personal taste lends me to choose pages from Shakespeare's sonnets because of their wonderful familiarity and brief, impactful nature.'

Choose bold, stylised frames to display these delicate poetry pages.

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