Why do murals not come with samples?

The digital era makes it an exciting time to be alive for a wallpaper store. We can print nearly anything. Of course there are always limitations depending on the wall size or the format style of graphics. 

We always take a close look when custom printing to see what will work and how to make it work.

But one of the biggest questions is 'can I have a sample?'.

Murals are cool. Massive works of art spread over a 300 or 400 cm wide space. Most murals do not have a repeating pattern (unless they are a hybrid mural -wallpaper) but are a giant picture. So how can a small A4 sample accurately reflect a massive work of art?

For example take our Dutch Pastel mural. Look at the artwork spread out in the centre. If we were to order one in and cut it up for sampling, you may end up with a corner piece. You may end up with a centre piece but either way - how will this accurately reflect the mural?

Now take a look at our Banana Leaf Mural.

This mural actually has a repeating pattern of sorts. So we can cut this one up and send out sampling. One small piece will give you a fairly good over view of the mural as a whole. The only problem is scale. As around 80% of murals we have are custom printed to fit your wall - every single one becomes different and unique. The scale we send of this mural WILL be different to the mural that you order. So once again - even though we can send out sampling and it will give you a general idea the scale will be different.

Our Kubla Khan Mural comes with a type of sampling and its the best I have seen so far for murals - but still I don't know if it 100% accurately displays the grandeur and absolute amazing stunning quality that a large scale mural can create. As you can see below it has the full picture and then a portion of the picture at 100% to sort of show you what it is like.

The next image is of a mural sample book we have in-store. As you can hopefully see this book is basically just photos of murals - same as the website. There are no actual samples.

So yes - printing murals is exciting and we do a lot of behind the scenes work when custom printing to your dimensions. Everyone more or less becomes bespoke and therefore often there is no sampling. It is a bit of a leap of faith but as photo technology improves hopefully the need for sampling is eliminated all together.