Photo ledges area beautiful way to display your favorite photos and pieces of artwork.  You’ve no doubt seen them all over Pinterest and in your favorite home stores, but did you know they are super easy to DIY?! It’s true!  There are tons of DIY tutorials for photo ledges on the internet, but we’ve created the easiest and most affordable way to DIY it. You don’t even need to own a saw to create this stunning picture ledge.  It’s that easy!

First, you need to prepare your supplies.  I headed to Lowe’s to purchase 3 pieces of wood.  The great thing about this tutorial and project is that you can choose whatever sizes work for you.  I decided I did not want our photo ledge to be as long as our couch, so I chose wood pieces that were 6 feet in length.  You can go shorter or longer depending on the size of your space.  Use the poplar wood at Lowe’s as it is the least expensive.  For my 6 foot ledge the project came in at under $15.00

Materials Needed:

1- 1×2

2- 1×4

1 1/2 wood screws

1 can of stain in your choice of color

Vinyl Gloves

Old towel or paper towels for staining

Step 1: Screw the boards together.  This is pretty self explanatory based on the picture below.

Step 2: Using sandpaper sand the edges and corners of your art ledge before staining.

Step 3: Stain your ledge.  You’ll definitely need the gloves for this step!  I used Miniwax Early American stain for this project.

Step 4:  Hang your ledge.  The ideal height for the ledge would be to place it where the artwork and photos will be at eye level.  To hang it on the wall we simply screwed the photo ledge right into the wall making sure we hit at least 2 studs for extra durability.

Step 5: Decorate! I always have a stockpile of picture frames from yard sales waiting to be used for a project.  I simply spray painted the frames in black an white then ordered photos to fill them.  For the larger frame on the right I chose to have my older son draw a picture for the frame, I love personalizing our home in such a meaningful way!

Here are a few of my favorite signs and picture frames to decorate with:

The entire process of making the photo ledge took less than 20 minutes of actual hands on time, it took several hours for drying however.  These photo ledges are such a great way to display photos and art with the option to constantly swap them out without wrecking your walls.  Let me know if you make one in the comments below!