How to Make a Heart Photo Wall (and Get the Shape Right the First Time)

Short answer: a heart photo wall works at 11, 20 or 40 blocks. The 20 block version lays out 4-7-5-3-1 down the rows and finishes about 34 inches wide at 4 inch blocks, or 48 inches at 6 inch. Use the paper grid that comes in the box, hang the single bottom block first to set the center line, and work up in symmetrical pairs.

A heart wall is the arrangement people want and then talk themselves out of, usually for one of two reasons. They think it will look like a craft project, or they suspect they will hang it and it will come out lopsided.

Both are fair. Both are avoidable.

How many blocks does a heart photo wall need?

A heart is not a shape you can improvise with an arbitrary number of squares. Too few and it reads as a blob. Too many in the wrong rows and the lobes go square.

Three counts work cleanly:

• 11 blocks. The small heart. Reads best at 6 or 8 inch so it has enough presence.
• 20 blocks. The one most people want, laid out 4-7-5-3-1 down the rows. The widest row is seven blocks, so at 4 inch it is about 34 inches wide and at 6 inch about 48.
• 40 blocks. The full wall version. At 4 inch it fills a feature wall without taking a whole room.

The rows are what make the shape. The two lobes at the top need an odd notch between them, and the point at the bottom has to come down to a single block. Skip either and it stops reading as a heart from across the room.

Will a heart photo wall look like a craft project?

The thing that makes heart walls look cheap is the material, not the shape. Paper prints taped to a wall, or thin tiles with a sticker finish.

These are Grade A Baltic birch, three quarters of an inch thick, with the image applied by di-sublimation rather than inkjet, so it is part of the surface and will not scratch off. The edge is visible from the side, so each block reads as an object sitting off the wall rather than a sticker on it. The photo above was shot at an angle on purpose so you can see it.

How do you get the heart shape straight?

For a grid you can eyeball the spacing and be fine. For a heart you cannot, because the eye is very good at spotting an asymmetric heart and very bad at drawing a symmetric one.

Your order comes with a paper grid printed at the right spacing. Tape it to the wall, step back, move it until it is centered and level, then push the included thumbtacks straight through the grid at each mark and tear the paper away. You never measure the wall.

Spacing is one inch between blocks, the same as every other arrangement. The full method is in how to hang a photo wall straight.

Where do you start hanging a heart?

Most arrangements are best hung from the center outward. A heart is the exception. Start with the single block at the bottom point, because that block sets the vertical center line for the whole shape.

Get that one plumb, then work up the rows symmetrically, left and right in pairs. Errors split in both directions instead of accumulating on one side.

Each block has a neodymium magnet in the back and snaps onto the thumbtack head, so if a tack goes in a hair off you nudge the block rather than pulling the tack and starting over. That forgiveness matters more on a heart than on a grid.

Which photos go where in a heart?

Two rules that hold up.

Put the photo you care about most at the bottom point. It is the closest thing the shape has to a focal point and it is the one people remember.

Spread the light and dark photos evenly rather than clustering them. A heart with all the bright photos on one lobe looks tilted even when it is perfectly level. This is the single most common way a heart wall goes wrong, and it has nothing to do with hanging.

Beyond that, mix. Do not group by year or by person. The shape provides the order.

What does a heart photo wall cost?

Blocks are $9 at 2 inch, $20 at 4 inch, $30 at 6 inch and $40 at 8 inch, with automatic volume discounts of 10% over $120, 20% over $240 and 30% over $480.

• Twenty 4 inch blocks, about 34 inches wide: $400 list, $320 after the 20% tier
• Twenty 6 inch blocks, about 48 inches wide: $600 list, $420 after the 30% tier
• Eleven 8 inch blocks: $440 list, $308 after the 30% tier

U.S. shipping is free over $49 and orders ship in three to five business days.

Build it

The photo wall builder has the heart as a shape option in all three sizes. Upload your photos, pick heart, and it arranges them into the rows for you. Upload more than the shape holds and it moves you up to the next size instead of making you choose.

If a heart is not quite it, the nine arrangements that actually work covers circles, grids and mosaics too.

Handmade photo blocks since 2012.