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20 Travel-Inspired Decorating Ideas to Evoke Your Favorite Destination

Showcase globes, maps, suitcases, and other accessories from your travels throughout your home.

Andrea Beck served as garden editor at BHG and her work has appeared on Food & Wine, Martha Stewart, MyRecipes, and more.

Most everyone has souvenirs from their travels, whether it’s shells from the beach, novelty T-shirts, or even just plenty of photos. Luckily, there are plenty of both subtle and bold ways to incorporate your love for travel into your home.

Hanging photos is simple, but you can also turn them into a statement by creating a gallery wall or even unique wallpaper. Or use photos of places you dream of going, maps, or subway routes for more graphic, abstract art. Small touches can also add elements of travel to your home. Vintage suitcases come in many colors and can be displayed to add extra storage or serve as an end table. Use these travel decor ideas as inspiration, then adapt them to fit your favorite places and trips.

Seashell Display

Cameron Sadeghpour

Large seashells from a beach vacation double as tabletop travel decor and as a way to display Polaroids. Smaller shells can also nest inside a larger shell as a way to show them off on a shelf or table. Place them next to a blue glass lamp reminiscent of sea glass to tie the coastal theme into the rest of the room.

Abstract Travel Wall Decor

Adam Albright

City maps make stunning travel wall decor and are a great way to remember some of your favorite (or dream) destinations. These pictures lean abstract, using the city streets to create a leaf-like design. The shades of green used on each map complement dark green wall paint .

Subtle Travel Decor

Ann VanderWiel Wilde

Small accents can help show your love for a destination without dominating a room. In this alcove, a simple metal sign shaped like the state of Minnesota hangs above a rustic dresser with other memorabilia. This travel wall decor fits into almost any room and can take the shape of a favorite country or city skyline.

Map Wall Art

Using maps as wall decor is an easy way to incorporate graphic art in muted pastel colors. Despite varying color palettes, this trio of maps feels cohesive thanks to neutral frames with white mats. Bold navy walls help further showcase the travel decor.

Suitcase Bar Cart

Cocktails (or zero-proof drinks ) can definitely be part of a great vacation, so it’s only natural to incorporate travel decor into your home bar cart . A vintage suitcase is the focal point of this bar cart and acts as unique storage for a variety of bottles and bar tools. Antique drawers contain glassware and match the feel of the old-fashioned suitcase.

Seashell Storage

Brie Williams

Seashells are a popular beach souvenir, but finding a place to store them can be tricky. These embellished boxes are a beautiful way to display shells . Each box features a mosaic of shells while also providing storage on a living room mantel . Complete the look with other ocean souvenirs, like driftwood or sea glass, and vases and artwork with blue accents.

Entryway Travel Decor

David A Land

Display travel decor in your home’s entryway for a reminder of your favorite destinations every time you walk in the door. This console table includes a travel bag that's ready to be grabbed for any adventure. Houseplants also help give the space a tropical feel, and the tabletop provides a surface to display travel photos.

Travel Wallpaper

In addition to small accents, you can also add travel decor to your home on a larger scale. World maps paper the walls of this bedroom . The muted colors complement natural wood furniture and blue accents on the bed. The wallpaper contributes eye-catching texture without overwhelming the space.

Showcase Souvenirs

KIM CORNELISON

This living room features several souvenirs that work together in a subtle way. A gallery wall incorporates map artwork; its bright colors and abstract shapes coordinate with a globe perched on top of a bookcase. A bright blue vintage suitcase on one shelf nods to vacationing and pairs well with the navy velvet sofa .

Historical Wall Decor

Alisal Ranch

These large-scale framed maps act almost as an accent wall in this dining space. It includes historical boundaries and territory lines from the early days of the U.S., and its rustic appearance matches the wood-plank wall and vintage chairs. A large map can also serve as a way of tracking your travels across the country.

Bookshelf Display

If you enjoy collecting art on your travels, display them together on a shelf to blend souvenirs with your personal style. This bookcase includes a variety of vases, figurines, and sculptures from a variety of destinations. Natural materials like wood and earthy colors tie everything together.

Mural Accent Wall

John Bessler

Large-scale wallpaper prints can be overwhelming, but using them on an accent wall is a stylish way to add a bold pattern to a room. This living room has a tropical feel thanks to the blue and green mural of palm trees. The colors tie in with the area rug, and the graphic print contrasts the black-and-white striped seating.

Vibrant Color Palette

Dustin Halleck

The rich jewel tones of this library create a luxurious feeling. Stacked vintage suitcases serve as an end table while matching a floral rug and dark cobalt walls. Shelves near the seating area provide an opportunity to display travel souvenirs like prints, decorative boxes, and figurines.

Surfing Inspiration

Chad R. Mellon

Add a nod to the beach without displaying shells or pictures of the coast. Instead, hang a surfboard patterned with typography for a sunny, ocean vibe that upgrades a blank wall. Pair with a wood vanity and blue bathroom floor tiles for a casual coastal aesthetic.

Photo Wall Treatment

A repeating pattern of coastal photos creates a bold but still neutral wallpaper in this bedroom. Customize walls with your own photos, or find a print that features professional photos from a dream destination. Pair with a blue painted ceiling and geometric light fixture to turn the room into a beachy paradise.

Coastal Travel Decor

Bring the beach to a small area of your home. In this room, seashells and starfish are displayed alongside ceramics featuring shades of blue. The seaside collection and cool colors help bring a coastal feel to a section of the room where dishes and serving platters are stored.

DIY Nightstand

CARSON DOWNING

Vintage suitcases take on a new function with this DIY bedroom decor. Stack three on top of each other to create just the right height for a nightstand next to the bed . Pair with a lampshade patterned with a map of the country to really highlight a travel theme.

Tropical Decor

Carson Downing

Large-scale botanical wallpaper creates a tropical aesthetic in this bedroom. The print complements green painted flooring and a leafy bedspread. Natural accents, including a woven leather headboard and rattan side table, make this room feel like a tropical destination.

Decorate with Globes

Kritsada Panichgul.

Go all-out with travel decor with a shelf full of globes. Here, the globes feature similar colors and are grouped by size for a cohesive look. Instead of buying new globes, shop secondhand or thrift stores for vintage varieties.

Dining Room Souvenir Display

Several decor items work together to create travel-inspired style in this dining room . A large print of a beach scene provides seaside inspiration, while a large shell and a piece of driftwood act as centerpieces for the table and credenza. A pendant light with natural fibers completes the look.

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How to Create the Perfect Travel Photo Gallery Wall

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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!)

•  Remember stunning scenes, majestic vistas, and beautiful cities. Photos never do it justice, but it will bring back my memory of the place
• Create stronger bonds of love for your family
• Feel nostalgic for good memories from journies around the world
• To encourage and motivate future trips and adventures to add to the collection (and get another pin in our travel map!)
• Have travel on your mind as you can see so much of the world left to explore.
• Motivation to save for your next trip
• 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:

• Display many of our favorite travel photos
• Professional Push pin map to help us track our trips and plan future trips
• 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.

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?
• 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.

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.

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 [email protected] or on Instagram.com/flybytheseatofourpants

I would love to find inspiration in your travels!

Fly by the Seat of our Pants contains affiliate links. When you buy through the links it helps keep this website running, at no extra cost to you.

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24 comments.

Love this and plan on doing something similar in my basement. Can you tell me how you put the info on each of the photos? What program you used? Love the idea of that. Thanks!

I used adobe photoshop. Im sure there are many photo editing software that can do it. Canva is a free program…

Great tips and ideas! Thank you. Another DIY project to add to the list.

Great information, I have never thought of doing this. I really like the idea. I just need to figure out where I could put this in my house somehow. I have always wanted away to put our fun adventures on a wall.

Its a great way to bring your trip home with you! You could even do a small corner of just a few photos you rotate through…

I love this idea. I’ve always wanted to create a travel wall and this has given me the inspiration to do it! I love how you added the map as the center point and built the rest around it. Its a very organized way to display many photos in one area and tell a story with it.

Thank you! I really like how it turned out! Show me yours when you finish it!

This is an awesome idea! I have one but it is in the process of being made. =) Planning more vacation trips with my little ones.

share with me what you come up with! Hope your travels go smoothly with the littles!

Awesome idea! This will be the same thing that me and my wife are planning to do by the time we move to our new home. Thanks for sharing it!

Thank you so much for this post! I have actually been working on our travel gallery and have had a hard time deciding which direction to take. I think my original thought would have been to chaotic. You inspired me to go with a more simple approach. I’m excited to work on it now!

oh good! I know my first few ideas would’ve been really chaotic because of the number of trips we take! Most wall only have a few photos with more decor, but I wanted to streamline mine!

I absolutely LOVE this idea! Now I just have to find a wall 🙂

Yep that can be challenging! Is there a wall you really dislike that you can redo?

I think this is awesome and something I will definitely do. I just had my first child in September of 2017 and we’ve already traveled to North Carolina from Alaska together. About to fly again to Oregon and then England for the summer. This is also a great way for me to FINALLY decorate my bedroom!

Wow! You are going places! Yep, we love it in our bedroom too!

Love this idea! I was actually just looking for ideas on how to do the same sort of things. I love how clean and organized yours looks. I have a large world map that I want to do it with.

Finding the map was the hardest part for me! So if you already have yours you are ready to go!

I love this and want to do it! Plus the low cost makes me super happy!

Right? I thought it would cost a lot more to re do the entire thing to my liking!

I love this! My fiancé and I were recently talking about printing our trip photos and starting a photo gallery.

Perfect time to start just as you are starting out your marriage! Leave lots of blanks for the future!!

Love this idea! The muted map tones really help the pictures stand out. Definitely going to do something similar! (I wonder how we could include both a world map and a U.S. map… hmm….)

Oh, good idea. I was think I would just convert over to a world map, but it would be better to have both! Our kids just got passports and we are starting to travel the world more. Let me know what you come up with!

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Omsk: Western Siberia's hidden gem

A city view of Omsk. Source: Dmitry Feoktistov

Omsk was founded in 1716 when a wooden fort was constructed to house a Cossack unit in the area to protect the expanding Russian frontier from Central Asian nomadic incursions. It served various administrative functions throughout the 1800s and became infamous as a place of exile and incarceration. The city was rundown when selected as a hub for the Trans-Siberian railway in the 1890s. Many international trade companies and foreign consulates relocated here and the remnants of their offices can still be found in the city today.

The mystery of Kolchak’s gold

Omsk became the headquarters of the anti-Bolshevik white army led by Admiral Aleksandr Kolchak in 1918. In late 1918 there was a revolt in the city initiated by a leftist faction (Socialist Revolutionary Party or SPs) with 500 rebel deaths at the hands of Cossacks and Czechoslovak soldiers, a major factor in convincing the SPs to join the Bolsheviks. There is a large Soviet-era monument to the uprising at the corner of Lenina street and Broz Tito street.  

Kolchak was entrusted with a large portion of the Tsarist’s gold reserves, yet amazingly lost much of it. Supposedly 250 million rubles were lost (about $8 million at the time). Legend has it that they were buried near the village of Taiga, yet numerous excavations have turned up nothing. The area still attracts the occasional fortune seeker.

Kolchak’s headquarters are located at what is today the  Omsk Regional Archives  at Broz Tito St., 3. Nothing shows how much times have changed as the imposing Kolchak statue that was unveiled in 2012 around the corner. The statue guards  Kolchak restaurant , a four-story culinary complex featuring a steak house, an Irish pub, a Central Asian café and an Italian eatery.  For more details on where and how to dig Kolchak's gold, see  Top Ten Mysterious Lost Treasures of Russia

Dostoevsky and the Tsar

At 1.15 million people Omsk dwarfs the region’s second largest city, Tara (population 28,000). The city is split by the River Irtysh into two sections (all places of interest are on the right bank) with downtown emanating from the River Om.

Most foreigners have heard of Omsk via writer Fyodor Dostoevsky who spent four years here as a prisoner (1849-1853). He spent most of his time in Omsk in squalor and chains and with no books besides the Bible, however, it left an indelible mark on his memory and influenced his future literary output. There is a statue of the writer in chains grasping a Bible at the corner of Partizanskaya and Spartakovskaya streets, where Dostoevsky undoubtedly stepped many times. A  museum dedicated to the author's time in Omsk  is located nearby at Dostoevskogo St. 1. The local university is also named for him.

A view of the Assumption Cathedral, Omsk. Source: Lori/Legion-Media

Tarskaya Street is one of the city’s oldest thoroughfares. It features a monument to victims of Stalinist repressions and the Tara gates, originally built in 1792 as one of the four entrances to the Omsk fort. Nearby stands the Assumption Cathedral, one of the largest churches in Siberia. Future Tsar Nicholas II laid the first stone here in 1891 when making his way back to St. Petersburg after his Eastern journey.

In Omsk you are never more than a few steps from the village, made clear when one exits the center to the north, where most houses are wooden and roads unpaved. Stroll along Bulatova and Rabinovicha streets, a well-preserved ensemble of wooden architecture.

Omsk’s cultural heritage 

The Pushkin State Library is worth a look with busts of Russian literary figures adorning the front side of the building. At the corner under the big “M” is one of several stations of the never completed Omsk metro. Construction began in 1992, but as of 2014 the project is again dormant due to financing problems.

One of Omsk’s most famous sons is Symbolist painter Mikhail Vrubel (1856-1910). Vrubel ignored contemporary trends and focused on themes from fairy tales, demons and religious subjects and also designed a majolica frieze for the Metropol Hotel in Moscow. Omsk’s Fine Arts Museum is named for him and features a number of  his works .

Milhail Vrubel's painting 'Demon Seated in a Garden' (1890)

Over the years a number of tourists have tripped over the monument to Stepanych. This bust of a plumber rising from a sewer was the idea of Omsk’s former mayor after a trip to Slovakia in the 1990s. Stepanych has become one of the symbols of the city.

Omsk is a hockey town, with one of the major teams,  Avangard , in the KHL, Russia’s premiere professional league. Russian champions on several occasions, check out a match at Omsk Arena. But if you can’t catch a game there’s a large kiosk featuring the team’s merchandise at the airport.

Siberian   punk, jazz and the classics

While Omsk may not be on everyone’s radar musically, it does host a  musical theater  built just after the war. The building on 10 Let Oktyabrya Street is in the form of an enormous sloping grand piano.

A monument to Stepanych, Lenina Street, Omsk. Photo credit: RIA Novosti/Pavel Lisitsyn 

Perhaps Russia’s most famous punk band,  Grazhdanskaya oborona  (Civil Defence), was formed here in 1982. The band was active until 2008 when lead singer Yegor Letov died of heart failure at age 43. Letov is buried at the Staro-Vostochnoe cemetery. A sprawling graveyard with thousands of graves, fans should stop at the administration for help in locating his grave.

In Russia, Omsk is known among the younger, tech-savvy generation primarily because of the “Omsk bird,” also known as Winged Doom. The origin of what became one of Russia’s most ubiquitous memes comes from a painting by German artist Heiko  Müller. One day in 2009 an Internet user posted this painting with the line, “Welcome to Omsk,” at the top. Additional versions menace viewers stating, “Don't try to leave Omsk,” and “Omsk is closer than you think.” Like many popular memes on the Internet, this one went viral and has become something like an unofficial symbol of the city.

All rights reserved by Rossiyskaya Gazeta.

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Omsk Oblast throughout the year

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