---
title: "How to Build a Framer CMS Gallery (Step by Step)"
description: "Step-by-step guide to building a Framer CMS gallery: native collection-based layouts, where they fall short for real image-heavy sites, and how to add lightbox, masonry, and carousel views."
canonical_url: "https://framerhub.io/blog/framer-cms-gallery-guide"
last_updated: "2026-08-11T00:00:00.000Z"
---

A **framer gallery** sounds like a simple thing to build until you actually need one: a photography portfolio, a product showcase, a before/after project gallery. The native building blocks get you a grid of images fast. Getting a gallery that feels finished, full-screen lightbox, varied-height masonry, a smooth carousel, takes more work.

This guide walks through building a Framer CMS gallery step by step: setting up the collection, building a native grid, where that native approach runs out of road, and how to add the layouts real image galleries need.

---

## Step 1: Set up your CMS collection for a gallery

Open the CMS panel and create a collection (or add fields to an existing one) with at minimum:

- **Image field** — the actual photo or graphic
- **Title field** — for alt text and any visible caption
- **Category or tag field** (optional) — if you plan to filter or group the gallery
- **Order/date field** — to control display sequence

Keeping images in a CMS collection, rather than manually placing static images on the canvas, means adding a new photo later is filling out a form, not rebuilding a layout.

---

## Step 2: Build a native Collection List grid

Drag a Collection List onto your canvas and connect it to your gallery collection. Design the card: usually just the image, sized and cropped consistently, with the title as alt text.

Set the Collection List's layout to a grid with fixed columns. This gets you a working image gallery quickly, and for a small, simple use case (a handful of team photos, a short list of past projects), this native grid may be all you need.

---

## Step 3: Where the native grid runs short

Once you're building something more than a small static grid, a few gaps show up consistently.

### No native lightbox

Clicking an image in a native Collection List does nothing by default. For a real gallery experience, visitors expect clicking a thumbnail to open a full-screen view with next/previous navigation. Building this manually means wiring up overlay states, click handlers, and keyboard navigation by hand, real work for something that should be a standard gallery feature.

### No masonry layout

Native Framer grids are structured: fixed columns, fixed row heights (or uniform aspect-ratio crops). A masonry layout, where each image keeps its natural aspect ratio and the grid flows around varying heights, isn't something Framer's native Stack or Grid layout produces. This is the look most photography and visual portfolio sites actually want, and it's not achievable with native layout tools alone.

### No carousel

For a "swipe through images" pattern, product galleries, before/afters, featured work, native Framer has no built-in carousel component. You'd need to build swipeable, draggable behavior from scratch with code.

### Manual work for filtering by category

If your gallery has categories (e.g., a photographer's work split into "Weddings," "Portraits," "Events"), combining category filtering with a gallery grid means layering Framer's native Dynamic Filters on top of your Collection List. That works for simple single-category filtering; see our [Dynamic Filters guide](/blog/framer-dynamic-filters-guide) for the full setup and where that native filtering also hits limits.

---

## Step 4: Adding lightbox, masonry, and carousel with Gallery Kit

[Gallery Kit](/plugins/gallery-kit) is built specifically to close these gaps for CMS-driven galleries, without leaving the Framer canvas.

**Lightbox.** Click any image in the gallery to open a full-screen viewer with next/previous navigation, swipe support on mobile, and a close button, connected directly to your CMS collection.

**Masonry layout.** A true variable-height masonry grid that respects each image's natural aspect ratio, rather than forcing a uniform crop.

**Grid layout.** A clean, evenly-spaced grid for when uniform sizing is the right look (product photography, team pages).

**Carousel.** A swipeable, draggable carousel for featured images, before/afters, or a curated selection pulled from the same collection.

Because all four layouts read from the same CMS collection, you can switch between them, or use different layouts on different pages, without duplicating content or rebuilding your image list.

### Setting up Gallery Kit, step by step

1. Install [Gallery Kit](/plugins/gallery-kit) from the FramerHub plugin page or the Framer Marketplace.
2. Replace your native Collection List with Gallery Kit's gallery component, connected to the same CMS collection.
3. Choose a layout: grid, masonry, or carousel.
4. Enable the lightbox option if you want click-to-expand full-screen viewing.
5. Configure spacing, aspect ratio behavior, and any category filter binding.
6. Preview on both desktop and mobile, checking swipe behavior in the lightbox and carousel specifically.

---

## Native vs. Gallery Kit: quick comparison

<table>
<thead>
  <tr>
    <th>
      Capability
    </th>
    
    <th>
      Native Collection List
    </th>
    
    <th>
      Gallery Kit
    </th>
  </tr>
</thead>

<tbody>
  <tr>
    <td>
      CMS-connected grid
    </td>
    
    <td>
      Yes
    </td>
    
    <td>
      Yes
    </td>
  </tr>
  
  <tr>
    <td>
      Full-screen lightbox
    </td>
    
    <td>
      No
    </td>
    
    <td>
      Yes
    </td>
  </tr>
  
  <tr>
    <td>
      Masonry (variable height) layout
    </td>
    
    <td>
      No
    </td>
    
    <td>
      Yes
    </td>
  </tr>
  
  <tr>
    <td>
      Carousel / swipe view
    </td>
    
    <td>
      No
    </td>
    
    <td>
      Yes
    </td>
  </tr>
  
  <tr>
    <td>
      Mobile swipe gestures
    </td>
    
    <td>
      Manual build required
    </td>
    
    <td>
      Built in
    </td>
  </tr>
  
  <tr>
    <td>
      Category filter binding
    </td>
    
    <td>
      Via native Dynamic Filters
    </td>
    
    <td>
      Yes
    </td>
  </tr>
</tbody>
</table>

For a small, simple gallery, native is a perfectly reasonable starting point. For anything photography-focused, product-heavy, or expected to grow past a handful of images, the gaps above become real friction fast.

---

## Optimizing gallery performance

Image galleries are one of the easiest page types to accidentally make slow, since the whole point is displaying a lot of images.

**Serve appropriately sized thumbnails.** A thumbnail grid doesn't need full-resolution source images. Export or compress images sized for their actual display size, and let the lightbox load a higher-resolution version only when opened.

**Lazy-load below the fold.** Images further down a long gallery page shouldn't load until the visitor scrolls near them. Most CMS-connected gallery components handle this automatically, but it's worth confirming rather than assuming.

**Limit how many images render at once on very large collections.** If a collection has hundreds of images, consider pagination or a "load more" pattern rather than rendering everything on first load.

**Compress before upload, not after.** Uploading a 12MB photo and letting Framer resize it visually still means visitors download the full 12MB file. Compress and resize images before adding them to your CMS collection.

---

## Captions, metadata, and accessibility

**Alt text matters twice over for galleries.** It's both an accessibility requirement and a genuine SEO opportunity, since image search traffic is real traffic. Use your CMS title field as meaningful alt text, not a generic filename.

**Captions add context a photo alone doesn't.** For portfolio and case study galleries, a short caption (project name, location, or a one-line description) helps visitors who are skimming rather than studying every image closely.

**Keyboard navigation in the lightbox.** If you're building lightbox behavior yourself, make sure arrow keys move between images and Escape closes the viewer. A gallery plugin with lightbox built in should handle this by default, but it's worth testing rather than assuming.

---

## Choosing the right gallery layout for your project

**Photography portfolios** almost always benefit from masonry plus lightbox. Photos have varying aspect ratios, and visitors expect to click through to a full-screen view.

**Product galleries** usually look cleaner as a uniform grid, sometimes paired with a carousel for a "featured products" section above the main grid.

**Before/after or process galleries** (renovation work, design case studies) fit a carousel well, since the comparison usually benefits from a swipe-through sequence rather than a scattered grid.

**Team or simple resource galleries** with a small number of images may not need more than a native grid at all. Add the plugin when the project actually needs lightbox, masonry, or carousel behavior, not by default.

---

## Common Framer gallery mistakes

**Uncropped, inconsistent image sizes in a grid layout.** A grid expects consistent cropping. If images vary wildly in aspect ratio, either switch to masonry (which handles this naturally) or set consistent crop behavior on the grid.

**No lightbox on a photography site.** This is the single most common gap. Visitors expect to click a thumbnail and see the full image, not just a slightly larger version inline.

**Loading full-resolution images for every thumbnail.** Large image galleries need to serve appropriately sized images for thumbnails and only load full resolution in the lightbox view, or the gallery page becomes the slowest page on the site.

**No mobile testing for swipe interactions.** Carousels and lightboxes live or die on mobile swipe feel. Test the actual gesture on a phone, not just resize behavior in a desktop browser.

**Treating every project the same regardless of image count.** A gallery with 8 images and a gallery with 200 images have different needs. Small collections can stay simple. Large ones benefit from pagination, category filtering, or a curated "featured" carousel above the full archive, so visitors aren't scrolling endlessly to find something relevant.

**Skipping a fallback for empty categories.** If your gallery supports category filtering and a category temporarily has zero items, make sure the empty state communicates that clearly rather than showing a blank, broken-looking section.

For more on structuring image-heavy CMS content generally, see the [Framer CMS complete guide](/blog/framer-cms-complete-guide). If you're also customizing the rest of the page around your gallery, [FramerHub Components](/components) covers supporting sections like testimonials, stats, and CTAs.

---

## FAQ

### Can you build an image gallery with Framer's CMS?

Yes. Connect a Collection List to a CMS collection with an image field, and each collection item renders as a gallery entry. This works well for a basic grid but Framer's native Collection List doesn't include a lightbox, masonry layout, or carousel out of the box.

### Does Framer have a native lightbox for image galleries?

No. Framer's Collection List displays images in whatever grid or layout you design, but clicking an image doesn't open a full-screen lightbox natively. You'd need to build that interaction manually with overlays and state, or use a gallery plugin that includes lightbox behavior as a built-in component.

### How do I add a masonry layout to a Framer gallery?

Framer's native Stack and Grid layouts are structured (fixed columns and rows), which doesn't produce the varied-height masonry look. A true masonry layout, where image height varies naturally, needs a dedicated gallery component built for that layout pattern, since native Framer layout tools don't support it directly.

### What's the best way to build a photography portfolio gallery in Framer?

Use a CMS collection so new photos can be added without rebuilding the layout, and prioritize a lightbox for full-screen viewing since that's how most visitors actually want to view photography. A masonry or carousel layout, depending on how you want images grouped, rounds out a photography-specific gallery.

### Is Gallery Kit free?

[Gallery Kit](/plugins/gallery-kit) is a Framer plugin with lightbox, masonry, grid, and carousel layouts connected directly to your CMS collection. Check the current plan details on the Gallery Kit page for the latest pricing tiers.

---

## Bottom line

A native Framer CMS grid gets you a working **framer gallery** fast, and for small, simple use cases, that's genuinely enough. The moment you need lightbox viewing, a true masonry layout, or a swipeable carousel, all connected to the same CMS collection, native tools run out of road.

[Gallery Kit](/plugins/gallery-kit) covers all three without leaving the Framer canvas or writing custom code. If your project is a photography portfolio, product showcase, or any image-heavy CMS site, it's worth setting up before you've manually built half of this yourself.

*Last updated: August 2026*