How to Create the Perfect Travel Photo Gallery Wall

Sharing is caring!

A Travel Photo Gallery Wall is the perfect way to help your vacations keep on giving you inspiration and fond memories. Let your love of that dream destination continue to grow with a travel picture wall, well after the plane has touched down.

One of the best parts about traveling is being able to re-live the sights seen and memories created.  A fun way our family does this is by having a travel gallery on our wall with a map.

Where to put a Travel Photo Gallery Wall?

When we started traveling a lot as a family, we wanted something to strengthen our good memories of trips together and inspire future travel. We looked at lots of travel wall ideas.

We considered collecting travel wall decor from different destinations. Ultimately, but we decided our own memories from the lens of our own cameras and our viewpoint would be the best way to make our travels last forever.

We chose to create our wall of travel photos on a spacious and open wall in our master bedroom right next to our bed. Travel is a priority in our family, so it’s our private travel wall gallery. We aren’t showing off to our friends and family all our travel experiences, but rather keeping them close to our hearts and minds in our private room.

My husband and I cuddle up together and reminisce about our trips on the walls. We love seeing how little our kids were on past trips. Then when we get home from a trip, we enjoy going through our travel pictures and picking the best one to represent our feelings of the destination and our trip there.

We all use the travel photo gallery wall and push pin map to create future trip ideas and plans together.

Adding photos of our most recent adventures sometimes means we have to take out an old photo, but we keep a file of all our travel photos used in the past. Changing the travel photos on the wall make it look ‘new and different’ which sometimes is hard to do in a home.

Don’t let the memories fade when the trip ends! Get your travel pictures on the wall!

Benefits of a Travel Photo Gallery Wall

I love having a travel wall of photos.  Here are all the reasons this is worth your time, resources and a full wall in your home (or more!)

1.  Remember stunning scenes, majestic vistas, and beautiful cities. Photos never do it justice, but it will bring back my memory of the place
2. Create stronger bonds of love for your family
3. Feel nostalgic for good memories from journies around the world
4. To encourage and motivate future trips and adventures to add to the collection (and get another pin in our travel map!)
5. Have travel on your mind as you can see so much of the world left to explore.
6. Motivation to save for your next trip
7. Find destinations that are interesting and new right from the pushpin map. Easily see the spots you haven’t been to and be curious about what there might be to do or see there.

Travel Wall of Photos | Before and After

Our previous wall was a collection of random frames and different sizes of travel photos. We added the travel photos on our wall as we took new trips – with whatever frame we could find.  We added new frames and photos as we went so it was a bit chaotic.

Not to mention the ugly yellow and red wall! we were due for an update!

When we recently repainted our master bedroom, we wanted to be more intentional in creating our travel gallery.  In the past, we would find a random new frame for a new trip photo and cram it into space on the wall.

My goals for the new gallery wall with a map included:

1. Display many of our favorite travel photos
2. Professional Push pin map to help us track our trips and plan future trips
3. Look Clean and Organized

How to Create a Travel Picture Wall

1. Push Pin Map

A travel Gallery photo wall needs to include a push pin map! I love the maps ready complete with the foam backing to easily stick pins in our vacation spots. A travel map helps you envision the world and be curious about a variety of places to see.

Push Pin maps are high quality and look gorgeous. There are so many options to choose from, you are sure to find exactly what works for your style and travel type.

Here are some travel wall ideas to consider as your pick your map.

• USA or World map?
• Artistic Map or Accurate Map?
• Busy Map or Simple Design?
• Colorful or muted tones?

After looking for many, many options, we decided that even though the artistic maps were more aesthetically pleasing, a map with accurate cities and roads would meet our needs better. 

However, with our new room colors and simple design, we wanted a map that had muted tones and was easy to look at from a distance.  We found a simple earth-toned map with major cities and roads listed. It is perfect!

These Push Pin Travel Maps have 8 frame options and over 20 different maps to choose from.  They come with a foam board already installed so it is ready to start adding your pins. And you will even receive map pins in your order, so you can start pinning your travels immediately. 

We received our Push Pin map within a week of ordering it.  It is durable in quality and was shipped to protect the frame. The map arrived exactly as shown on the website.

You’ll find many different options for world maps and US maps and even keepsake boxes and other travel decor and treasures from Push pin Maps.

2. Photos

Now comes the fun part of finding your very favorite photos from your trips.

• How many photos?
• Landscape only or with people in the photos?
• What size?
• Label photos with date or location?
• Artistic prints or random assortment

Keep in mind that most of your best travel photographs will be landscape not vertical. You’ll need more wide frames than long frames.  There will be the occasional tall photos (like the Eiffel Tower, Tower of Pisa or Gateway Arch). so don’t limit to only landscape. We opted for a design that gave us minimal vertical photo spaces and plentiful landscape options.

Do you want only artistic photos or some with your family in them?  We opted for some of both.  We love seeing how little our kids were on certain trips and talking about their changing looks and personality through the years. But we also enjoy using our photography skills to capture the perfect perspective at our destination.

Do you want to label your photos with locations or years?  We put a small tag on each photo with the location and year.  Even though we thought we would remember every trip forever, after 6 years of traveling, we realized we were wrong.  When we would look at our wall we were forgetting when and where we experienced things.

If you print all your photos at the same time, it is much cheaper to get 8x10s here for only $.70 each.  There is a $9 shipping fee, so this is only cost effective if you are buying a large number of photos. We received 60 8 x 10s in a couple of days for half the cost of printing locally.

3.Frames

Do you want larger, decorative frames with mats or simple frames? 

On our previous travel wall, the variety of frames and mats were distracting and chaotic. We just wanted to see our photos without the distraction of the frames. We purchased inexpensive, uniform frames. We ordered all the same frames in bulk and saved money.

The exact frames I used are no longer sold at Walmart, but here’s a similar version at Amazon.  

If your budget allows, you may consider making canvas prints of your favorite photos.

4.Other Decor

Many travel galleries have beautiful pieces of decor mixed in.  Arrows, Quotes, Wooden plaques, or globes or travel souvenirs on a shelf might be a perfect addition to your travel display.  Look around for a favorite travel decoration to add to your travel photo gallery wall.

Our wall was just a little full, so we put travel decor in other locations in our home.

Total Cost of our Travel Photo Gallery Wall

• 60 8×10 prints= $35
• 36  5×7 prints =$28
• Push Pin Travel Map = $120 ( includes the frame and pins)
• 60 8×10 frames and 36 5×7 frames = $88

Total for a new travel wall = $271

Do you have a travel photo wall idea? 

Please share it with me at flybytheseatofourpants@gmail.com or on Instagram.com/flybytheseatofourpants

I would love to find inspiration in your travels!

If you liked this, you may like these posts, too!

Planning the Perfect Staycation | Creating Lifelong Memories Close to Home Take the Kids to the Mall of America | Plan the Perfect Day Out Hiking with Kids | Create an Easy and Enjoyable Experience Do-It-Yourself Vacations | Pros and Cons of DIY Travel