What are the pros and cons of different types of wall art application?
Over the last 15 years of painting murals for clients all across the country, I have also met many people that have bought and used mural wall paper and also mural stickers as well as commissioning mural art , and so I thought it would be useful to put together a list of the pluses’ and minuses of each mural product so that when thinking of having a mural in some form within your home or business you can consider which application will be right for you.
Hand Painted Murals
Pros
You can literally have any type of style you want, in any colour scheme you want, designed to fit your exact wall area, in any location , even out door walls and bathrooms can have a hand painted mural.
The design can be created to work with your budget and can take into account lots of different themes within one design
When I hand paint a mural the colours are all mixed so they can be created to match any colour scheme required.
My murals are completely bespoke so you know no one else is ever going to have your mural on their wall.
You can personalise the design as much or as little as you want which is great for children’s rooms where you can have their names included in the design or a favourite poem or saying added to the artwork. For business you can have your corporate message included in the design.
A hand painted mural is organic so on the day should you want a certain element added , made larger or placed differently - it can be done - there is flexibility in the application of a mural.
For high traffic areas a mural can be painted in a specialist paint that is super tough and can be wiped clean, really practical for care homes, offices, schools etc.
My murals don’t fade - they are painted with high quality emulsions that stay exactly the same colour no matter how many years you keep the mural.
There is literally hardly any mess having a mural painted , just dust sheets a few tool boxes and lots of paint brushes that’s about it.
With a hand painted mural you can keep adding to the design over time , so should you chose one wall to have the mural on and then decide you want other characters adding at a later date - for example as your child grows - this can easily be gone.
Not that you would ever want to, but if for some reason you had to remove the mural - it’s just a case of painting over it - minimum effort required, minimum mess as well compared to removing wallpaper.
Murals can be painted on many many different wall surfaces even textured wallpaper !
When designing and ordering a mural with me we discuss the complete project on the phone, via email and sometimes in person - you are working with an actual individual not a faceless website.
Cons
As a mural artist I maybe be a tiny bit biased as to the cons of having a mural - however - truly the only real possible negative to hand painted mural is that they can sometimes be more expensive than wall stickers but this is outweighed by the fact that hand painted wall art has huge longevity, stickers do not.
Mural Wall Paper
Pros
You can pick a design off the shelf and have it delivered to your door most of the time within a few days.
You don’t have to create your own theme or style you can just pick a design off the shelf.
There are thousands of different styles to choose from at a click of a button.
Cons
They are printed wall paper so unless you are super handy with the wallpaper paste you have the added cost of paying someone to install the printed mural as well as the cost of the mural wallpaper itself.
A lot of the time when it comes to actually having the printed wall art installed the wallpaper doesn’t always fit the wall area exactly - which can leave a disappointing finish - plus mural wallpaper can be extremely difficult to install compared to normal wallpaper and not always properly line up - leaving gaps in the design.
Some types of mural wallpaper and printed wall art can easily come away from the wall and start to peel as well as also fade in sunlight.
Printed wall art is mass produced so lots and lots of people can have exactly the same design as you.
You can’t add to the printed wall art once it’s installed - it’s just as it is until you decide to change it .
It’s can be a very messy time consuming job removing wallpaper once you’ve decided you want to change it .
Mural printed wall art and wallpaper can actually end up being more expensive than hand painted murals once you add up the cost of the product, delivery and then installation.
You can’t have a bespoke design, it’s all just artwork off the shelf so you can’t have any personalisation added to the design.
You won’t actually know exactly what the colours of the artwork will look like until it turns up on your doorstep - they maybe be brighter than you’d seen online - but now you’ve already paid for the product and a lot of the time you can’t return a printed mural that has been printed to a specific wall size.
If you have a go of installing the printed wall paper mural art yourself and you are struggling - you don’t get any help - and if you make a mess of it (I have heard many a time from clients that this has happened) you then have to bin the wallpaper and start over.
When ordering printed wall art you could be dealing with a faceless website not an individual who will work with you throughout the project.
Mural Stickers
Pros
They are a really cost effect way of getting the latest Disney theme on a child’s bedroom wall or modern statement design for an interior or business.
There are masses and masses of designs to choose from.
You can buy them from lots of shops these days so you don’t even have to pay to get them delivered.
You can stick them anywhere , ceiling, walls, cupboards.
Cons
When trying to remove wall stickers they can take the wall paint with them - leaving you to have to repaint the wall afterwards.
Wall stickers are really unpractical for any location where children/people might be tempted to pick at them - and if they are not applied correctly in the first place they can easily start to peel off by themselves.
Larger wall stickers can actually be a lot more tricky to put on the wall than you might think - I’ve seen a number of them where the vinyl has ripped whilst being applied to the wall so bits of the design are missing, or patched up to try to hide the tear in the plastic.
If your wall is not completely smooth any texture or rough patches on the wall will show up in the vinyl and the sticker will not stick to the wall properly .
A great deal of mural stickers are shiny which isn’t always a nice finish to have on a wall.
Wall stickers are most of the time only quite small so can look quite odd when putting a lot of them on a wall and just looked plonked and won’t match in with a background colour.
Quite a lot of mural stickers are in brash gawdy colours as they are not necessarily made for the UK market.
When adding a number of vinyl stickers to a wall you can end up with a very plastic odour coming from the stickers.
Stickers can seem cheap, but in reality you can need to buy quite a large amount of them to make a room feel themed .
Murals stickers are great when first applied but can soon start to lift off the walls especially in warm environments.
