Your Guide to Cast Vinyl Wall Murals

JUNE 22, 2020| SpeedPro

Wall murals are a type of environmental graphics. They are large displays, traditionally painted onto a wall. They have a high impact because of the scale, and they are an excellent way to add a personalized artistic touch to your business. Traditionally, businesses would commission a painter to create their wall mural, and many businesses still take this approach. However, as we’ll see, there are some big advantages to choosing a cast vinyl wall mural over a painted one.

What Is a Cast Vinyl Wall Mural?

A cast vinyl wall mural is printed onto a material called cast vinyl and then applied to the wall like a large decal. Cast vinyl is a premier manufactured material that starts as a liquid mixture. By gradually heating it up, the mixture turns into a fabric-like plastic material with some valuable qualities, such as flexibility and durability.

One of the main qualities that sets cast vinyl apart from other types of print vinyl is how thin it is, which allows it to adhere to walls tightly, hugging every curve and crevice. The result is a material that looks much like paint. There are other materials to consider for mural printing, but cast vinyl is one of the most popular choices.

Of course, before the cast vinyl can go on the wall, your custom graphics will be printed onto the material. Your design team will create a mural graphic for your wall to fit the dimensions you’ve chosen. You can include photos, abstract art, text or anything else you wish to have on your mural.

Wall mural printing is not a project that all print shops can handle, but SpeedPro studios are well-equipped for this service. With a roll-fed printer, we can print murals up to 6 feet wide and 300 feet long on one continuous piece of material. Flatbed and UV printers can create murals up to 5 feet wide and 18 feet long. For murals that surpass these dimensions, we will divide them into separate panels that fit seamlessly together on the wall to form one large, uninterrupted graphic.

What Wall Murals Can Add to Your Business

So why create environmental graphics, and wall murals specifically, for your business or institution? Wall murals can deliver some significant benefits. A cast vinyl wall mural can:

• Create a focal point: A wall mural creates an eye-catching focal point in your facility. When someone comes into contact with the mural, they are sure to give it their attention. This is partly because of the sheer size of wall murals. A well-designed mural can attract even more attention and can make a memorable impression on people.
• Subvert expectations: People are used to seeing advertisements and marketing materials in many forms, but a mural is typically not one of them. Murals are more often associated with art. An eye-catching mural can help you market your business in an unexpected and refreshing way, especially if you are not overtly “salesy” with your design.
• Impress customers: A mural is an excellent way to impress customers. The scale of a wall mural can give a sense of grandness to any room or facility. Because murals are tied in with the architecture of the building, they also have a sense of permanence about them that can reflect well on your business.
• Add personality: Many office buildings, retail stores, schools and more lack personality. They look similar, with an abundance of drab, neutral walls, and this can make for a dull environment for customers, employees, students or whoever spends time in the building. An office wall mural can add a major splash of personality that livens up the space and makes it unique.
• Benefit employees: Research has shown that the presence of art improves a working environment for employees. Art can reduce stress and even improve brain performance. Younger workers, especially, expect more than a generic and uninteresting workplace today. An office should be vibrant and uplifting.
• Reinforce your branding: Companies look for ways to let their branding shine through across their marketing materials so they can raise awareness and make a memorable impression. But does your branding come through in your building itself? By including your logo, signature colors and other elements in your mural, you can help reinforce your brand.
• Educate people: A mural can also educate viewers. One example is a mural that shares a company’s, a school’s or a town’s history. You can create a timeline or simply share photos or illustrations celebrating your origin story or major accomplishments along the way. You can also use a mural to share current information about your business.
• Protect walls: A possibly unexpected benefit of cast vinyl wall murals is that they can protect your walls. Whereas you may need to repaint a wall after just a few years, a mural can last well beyond that, and when you remove the mural, you’ll have a well-preserved painted wall underneath.
• Boost sales: Considering all the benefits a wall mural can deliver, it’s no wonder that one study found that 60% of businesses that installed large-scale graphics such as wall murals increased their sales by 10% on average. Employees and customers alike can all be energized and influenced by the power of a wall mural.

You can enjoy these benefits and more when you create a show stopping mural or multiple murals for your building.

Types of Wall Murals

The sky is the limit to your creativity when it comes to wall murals. If you can picture it in your head, you can turn it into a wall mural. We can divide murals into three basic types, based on their primary purpose in the space:

1. Educational

Some murals are primarily aimed at relaying information. In other words, they are meant to educate the viewer. They might even serve as a reference tool. For example, a science building in a university could display a large-scale mural of the periodic table, or they could include photos and information about alumni who went on to become Nobel Prize winners. A pizza restaurant could create a mural that includes black-and-white photos of the company’s founding family and the original pizza parlor.

2. Branding

Your brand should come through in some sense no matter what type of mural you create, but some murals explicitly focus on branding. For example, brand murals may simply feature your company’s logo on an impressively large scale. It could also include text such as your company’s slogan, your core values or your mission statement. Stylizing these text-based murals with the right colors and fonts, and possibly images, can bring the message of your brand to life.

3. Artistic

Other murals are there purely for the purpose of enhancing aesthetics. With these murals, you may choose to include text, or you can focus solely on creating an eye-catching visual display. Some artistic murals are photo-based and some are more abstract. Create a design that shines in your space. Whatever that looks like, a more aesthetically pleasing environment can lead to a whole host of benefits, as we’ve seen.

Where to Place a Wall Mural

You can place a wall mural anywhere it will be seen and will create the effect you’re after. This could be in a reception area, a break room, a stairwell, a retail display wall or anywhere that makes sense in your building. Choose a wall that offers maximum impact. In some cases, you may identify multiple locations throughout your building where a mural would transform the environment.

Though cast vinyl can hug curves and crevices, you can typically get the best results and avoid distorting your mural’s design by applying it to a smooth surface. For a large-scale display on a more textured wall, such as one composed of brick or cement blocks, you may want to create your display on a rigid sign material and place it in front of the wall.

Why You Should Choose a Cast Vinyl Mural Over a Painted Mural

Once you decide you want to spruce up your building with a custom wall mural, you’ll want to determine whether to commission an artist to paint your mural or whether to create your mural digitally and have it printed on cast vinyl. There are many advantages to choosing a cast vinyl mural, including durability, cost, convenience and more. Let’s look at eight reasons a cast vinyl mural comes out ahead of painted murals.

1. It’s More Durable

As with any painted wall, a mural can fade or peel over time. The artist will have to come in to touch up the mural, or you’ll need to paint over it once it has lost its original luster. Cast vinyl murals can also experience wear, but they tend to be more durable than paint. Vinyl indoor wall murals usually last about seven to 10 years, though a well-cared-for vinyl mural can last indefinitely. You can even wipe the mural down as needed without damaging the surface.

2. It’s Cost-Effective

A printed wall mural can also be a more economical choice than a painted mural. Commissioning an artist to create your mural can easily cost thousands. This cost can add up even more when you consider the need to refresh or redo the mural periodically. In some cases, a mural printed on vinyl can cost a similar amount as a painted mural upfront, but when you consider its longevity, vinyl murals are undoubtedly more cost-effective in the long term.

3. It Adheres Like Paint

Some people may initially lean toward a painted mural rather than a vinyl one because they want the look of artwork that is completely adhered to the wall. With cast vinyl, though, you can achieve this same paint-like look. Even when your mural is going on a wall with curves or crevices, the cast vinyl print will tightly hug the wall. Interior wall murals don’t need to be painted to have a traditional mural appearance. You can achieve that look in a more practical way with cast vinyl.

4. You Have More Control

When you have a specific vision for your wall mural, communicating that vision to an artist and having them bring it to life can be challenging. Ultimately, the artist will need to have artistic control over the mural. With a vinyl mural, however, your design team can create a graphic and tweak it to match your exact vision. You’ll know exactly what the final product will look like rather than sitting back and hoping the mural turns out how you imagined.

5. It’s More Precise

A digital graphic also allows for more precision. For example, if you want to incorporate your logo in the mural, that mural should exactly match the way your mural appears in other places. Especially for some logos, painting them accurately is challenging if not impossible. If you include text in your mural, you’ll want to use fonts that are on-brand. When you want the fonts, colors and graphics in your mural to exactly match your branding, a cast vinyl mural is the way to go.

6. You Can Duplicate It

In some cases, you may want to duplicate the same mural in other locations. For example, if your office building is multiple stories, you may want a matching mural on each floor. Or, if your business has multiple locations, you may want the same mural at each location for consistency. An artist may offer to try to replicate a mural in additional locations, but this is extremely labor-intensive, and therefore costly, and the murals will never exactly match. With printed murals, however, you can use the same graphic in multiple locations.

7. You Can Install it Quickly

Another upside to cast vinyl murals is that they go up quickly and easily. An artist may need days or weeks to work on their mural, which can disrupt your business in the meantime. With a vinyl mural, on the other hand, you can easily install it in one sitting. Whereas working with a painter can be a drawn-out process, SpeedPro can offer quick turnaround times so you can go from creating your graphic to seeing it realized on the wall just like that.

8. It’s Easy to Remove

Unlike painted murals, which need to be thoroughly covered in a new coat paint to disappear, vinyl murals are easy to remove. This doesn’t mean it will fall off or peel off on its own. When you’re ready to remove it, though, you’ll appreciate how easily it comes off without damaging the wall underneath. This easy removal makes it easy to change out your mural whenever you want to feature a new design and can be a significant advantage for anyone renting space.

Wall Mural Printing From SpeedPro

When you want to transform your space with an eye-catching mural made from cast vinyl, SpeedPro is your ideal printing partner. We have the equipment and expertise it takes to create large-scale graphics that average print shops may not be able to handle. We can handle large wall mural printing and all your other signage needs so you can demonstrate your professionalism and creativity and share your message with everyone who walks through your doors. To get started, find a SpeedPro studio near you and reach out to your local SpeedPro staff.