How to Display Your Family Portraits
You know that moment when you finally get your gorgeous family portraits back, you’re completely in love with them, and then they just… sit on your computer? Or maybe you framed one or two, but the rest are living their best digital life in a folder you never open. Meanwhile, your walls are covered with random art you picked up at HomeGoods five years ago that doesn’t actually mean anything to you.
What if I told you that displaying your family portraits doesn’t have to be complicated or overwhelming? And that those empty walls in your home are actually perfect opportunities to showcase the faces you love most?
After 11 years of photographing families in Houston and helping them figure out what to do with their images, I’ve learned that the biggest obstacle isn’t choosing the photos, but it’s knowing how to actually display your family portraits in a way that feels intentional and beautiful. So let me walk you through some of my favorite ways to get your family portraits off your hard drive and onto your walls where you’ll actually see them every day.
Start by Taking Note of Your Space
Before you start ordering prints or buying frames, I want you to do something simple: walk through your home and notice the empty walls that feel a little lackluster. Where do your eyes naturally go when you walk into a room? Which spaces feel incomplete or could use something meaningful?
The best places to start are above furniture like, sofas, console tables, dressers, and beds. These are the natural focal points in your rooms, and they’re begging for something personal and beautiful to anchor them.
In my own Spring, TX home, I have family portraits above our living room sofa and solo portraits of each of my three boys in our bedroom. Each space serves a different purpose, but they all make our house feel like our home.
When clients tell me they don’t know where to put their photos, I always ask: where do you spend the most time? Where do you want to be reminded of these moments? Your family room where you gather every evening? Your bedroom where you start and end each day? The entryway that guests see when they visit?
Once you identify those spaces, we can figure out exactly what will work best there.
Measuring Your Space (The Part Nobody Wants to Do But Actually Matters)
Here’s where most people get stuck. They order prints that are either too small and get lost on the wall, or too large and overwhelm the space. But there’s actually a really simple formula that takes the guesswork out of it.
Measure the width and height of your wall above your furniture. Your wall art should make up 60-75% of those measurements. Let me show you how this works:
First, measure the available wall space. Let’s say you’re working with a wall above your sofa that measures 5 feet in height and 7 feet in width.
Then, multiply each measurement by 0.60 to find your minimum size:
- 5 feet x 0.60 = minimum height
- 7 feet x 0.60 = minimum width
Next, multiply by 0.75 to find your maximum size:
- 5 feet x 0.75 = maximum height
- 7 feet x 0.75 = maximum width
So for this wall, your frames should fill a space somewhere between 4.2-5.25 feet wide and 3-3.75 feet tall. This gives you the perfect visual balance. It’s large enough to make an impact, but not so big that it overwhelms your furniture.
Mock It Up Before You Commit
Here’s my favorite trick that I share with every client during our art consultations: use painter’s tape to mock up your frames before you buy anything or put holes in your wall.
Once you’ve determined your optimal size range, take painter’s tape and mark out the minimum and maximum heights and widths on your wall. This gives you a visual guide to work within. Then you can start playing with different frame configurations to see what feels right.
Maybe it’s one large canvas that fills the space beautifully. Maybe it’s a gallery wall with multiple smaller frames. Maybe it’s three matching frames in a row. The painter’s tape lets you experiment without commitment, and honestly, it makes the whole process so much less stressful.
I’ve had clients text me photos of their taped-up walls asking “Does this look right?” and I love it because it means they’re thinking through the space before making decisions. That’s exactly what you should be doing.
Creative Ways to Display Your Family Portraits Throughout Your Home
Let me share some of my favorite display ideas that go beyond just hanging a single frame on the wall:
Gallery Walls That Tell Your Story
A gallery wall with multiple frames in varying sizes creates such a beautiful, dynamic look. I love when families use this approach to showcase different sessions over the years, like newborn photos, family sessions, individual portraits of each child. It becomes a visual timeline of your family’s story.
For a large wall space (like that 7×8 foot example above), six 16×20 frames arranged together create gorgeous impact. The key is keeping spacing consistent between frames and still staying within your minimum and maximum parameters.
Tabletop Easel Displays
Don’t overlook horizontal surfaces! A beautiful framed print on an easel on your entryway console table, bedroom dresser, or bookshelf creates an intimate display that’s easy to change seasonally or as your family grows.
The Statement Canvas
Sometimes one large canvas is all you need. A single, beautiful family portrait above your sofa or bed commands attention and becomes the focal point of the room.
Hallway Gallery
That long hallway leading to bedrooms? This is can be tricky and feel off if not done right. A lot of times I’ve seen clients try to place large wall art that looks like it’s floating. It doesn’t look intentional. Here’s what I have tried for clients in the past. One is to use paint to cover vertically or hang multiples frames vertically. This can be hard to imagine. Feel free to send me a message with your hallway, and I’ll send you some ideas.
Why Your Family Portraits Make the Best Wall Art (Seriously!)
Here’s something I try to help every client understand: there’s a huge difference between decorating your home and making it feel like yours. You can fill your walls with pretty art from Target or Home Goods, and your house will look nice. But when you fill your walls with faces you love, moments you’ve lived, and memories you want to hold onto, that’s when your house becomes your home.
Family portraits add warmth and meaning that store-bought decorations simply can’t replicate. When guests visit, they don’t comment on your generic landscape print. They stop and look at your family photos. They ask about your kids, notice how much they’ve grown, remember moments they were part of.
And for you? Walking past photos of your family multiple times a day reminds you of what matters most. On the hard days when you’re juggling everything and questioning if you’re doing enough, seeing that photo of you laughing with your kids, or your baby’s newborn portrait, or that perfectly imperfect family session, it brings you back to what’s real and important.
This is part of why I’m so passionate about clients actually printing their photos. Those digital galleries are beautiful, but you’re not going to open your computer every day to look at them. You’re definitely not going to see them while you’re rushing through morning chaos or winding down at night. But that gallery wall in your living room? You see it constantly, whether you’re intentionally looking or not.
Bringing It All Together: From Planning to Hanging
Let me walk you through the full process so it feels manageable:
Step 1: Identify your spaces. Walk through your home and note where you want to display family photos.
Step 2: Measure your walls. Use that 60-75% formula to determine the right size range for each space.
Step 3: Mock it up. Use painter’s tape to visualize how different frame configurations will look.
Step 4: Choose your frames. Keep frame styles consistent for a cohesive look. I love simple, clean frames that don’t compete with the photos themselves.
Step 5: Select your images. This is where our art consultation comes in—I help you choose which photos work best for which spaces based on your home’s style and your family’s story.
Step 6: Hang with confidence. Once you’ve planned it out, the actual hanging becomes straightforward.
And here’s something important: you don’t have to do everything at once. Start with one space, maybe that wall above your sofa or your bedroom. Get that right, live with it for a while, and then move on to the next space when you’re ready.
Quick Tips for Choosing and Swapping Prints
One question I get all the time: “What if I want to change photos later?”
Great news, you absolutely can! Here are some tips to make that easy:
Keep frame sizes consistent. If you use the same size frames throughout a gallery wall, you can swap individual photos whenever you get new favorites without having to redo the entire display.
Consider having frames dedicated to certain types of photos. That baby wall I have? Those frames will always hold newborn portraits of my boys. But my living room gallery wall includes frames that I update as we have new family sessions.
Mix timeless and current. Some photos are forever keepers (newborn portraits, major milestones, perfectly captured family moments). Others can rotate as your family grows and changes.
Black and white photos are incredibly versatile. They work with any decor style, any season, and never look dated. When you’re unsure which format to choose, black and white is always a safe, timeless choice.
Don’t Forget About Portrait Gifts
While you’re thinking about displaying portraits in your own home, remember that framed prints make the most meaningful gifts. Grandparents, aunts, uncles, godparents, everyone who loves your family would treasure a beautiful framed portrait.
Some of my favorite client stories involve grandparents receiving framed portraits of their grandchildren. One grandmother told my client she cried when she opened it because “finally, I have something beautiful to put on my wall instead of just the phone photos I try to print at Walgreens.”
Standard gift sizes like 8x10s or 11x14s are perfect. They are large enough to display beautifully but not so large that they overwhelm someone’s existing decor. And honestly? A framed family portrait beats any store-bought gift. It’s personal, it’s meaningful, and it’s something they’ll keep forever.
Make Your Portraits Part of Your Everyday Life
Here’s what I want you to remember: your professional portraits deserve to be seen. Not hidden in a folder on your computer, not stored in a box somewhere, not “saved for someday.”
You invested in capturing these moments because they matter to you. Your family, your children at these exact ages, these fleeting stages that pass so quickly, you wanted to hold onto them. So let yourself actually experience that investment by putting these photos where you’ll see them every single day.
When clients come back to me a year or two after their session and tell me about the gallery wall they finally created, or the canvas they hung above their bed, they always say the same thing: “I should have done this sooner. I love seeing these photos every day.”
That’s exactly what I want for you too.
Where in your home do you want to display your family portraits? I’d love to hear about the spaces you’re thinking about, or any questions you have about sizing and framing. And if you’re ready to create portraits specifically designed for your walls, you’re thinking about that gallery wall above your sofa or that statement canvas in your bedroom, let’s chat during a pre-session consultation. We can plan exactly what will work perfectly in your Houston home, from the sizing to the style to the specific images we’ll capture.
What’s stopping you from getting your favorite family photos on your walls?
Download the step by step guide on how to hang your family portraits here.
