Someone told me my gallery wall looked like a crime scene layout and now I measure everything with a laser level

A friend said my frames were all crooked and spaced uneven, so I bought a Bosch GLM20 laser measure for $45 last week and it totally changed how I plan my wall layouts - has anyone else had a random piece of criticism that actually helped you improve your setup?

2 comments

2 Comments

oscarmurray4d ago

It's funny how one comment can totally flip a switch in your brain. Right after I got divorced, a friend said my living room looked like a waiting room, and I realized I'd been matching everything too much trying to make it look "right." That's when I started mixing up my furniture heights and putting stuff where it felt good instead of where the tape measure said it should go. It's like we all need someone to point out the dumb stuff we're doing before we can see it for ourselves. I swear half the progress I've made in decorating has come from someone being brutally honest about something I'd been blind to for months.

brooke_walker233d agoMost Upvoted

And that's the thing isn't it. We get so stuck in our own heads thinking we have to follow some invisible rulebook that nobody actually wrote. It's like we're all just guessing what "looks good" means and then convincing ourselves it has to be a certain way. I bet if you walked into five different houses and asked each owner why they put their couch where they did, you'd get five different answers that all sound like they came from a magazine. The waiting room comment is perfect because it's true so many of us decorate based on what we think other people expect instead of what actually makes us feel comfortable in our own space. Sometimes you just need somebody to call it like they see it before you can admit you've been doing it wrong the whole time.