Custom Wallpaper: Non-Permanent Installations for Dorms and Apartments

When you're living in a dorm room or apartment, or any other situation where you'll be relocating sooner than later, purchasing custom wallpaper can seem daunting. Why purchase and install a custom wall mural only to have to leave it behind when you move? If you have the image you want printed as a mural and you don't own your home, we have the perfect solution: custom wallpaper with a repositionable adhesive.

Our repositionable wallpaper is basically a peel and stick wallpaper. The wallpaper adhesive's formulation is such that you may put the material up on your wall and take it down several times. The key is to hold onto each panels' backing paper so that when you do remove your custom wall mural, it can be placed back on it's backing to protect the adhesive.

Additionally, our repositionable custom wallpaper won't damage the wall or leave any residue, a must for apartment and dorm rooms. The peel and stick nature of the wallpaper makes installation very easy, no need to hire a professional wallpaper installer to put your mural up or take it down. So don't let your current living situation stand in your way of having the custom wallpaper installation you've been dreaming of; our repositionable wallpaper allows you to take your wall mural anywhere you go.

Custom Wallpaper Project: Café Wallpaper

Decorating your business with custom wallpaper is a highly effective way to communicate with your customers. Whether it's a specific message, or an attempt to set a mood or environment, custom wall murals are an original and exciting way to brand your space.

We've done a lot of work with restaurants, producing custom wallpaper ranging for an international diner in Atlanta featuring imagery from around the world, to murals for nationwide chains such as Sharky's and Buffalo Wild Wings. Restaurants just getting started really benefit from our custom wallpaper services, as our meticulously printed wall murals lend an air of professionalism and longevity far beyond the average start up.

What's more, as our digital wallpaper services are completely custom, you can have a mural that's fun and light hearted like the hot dog wall murals shown, to a mural that is more sophisticated and elegant, all in keeping with your restaurant's theme and attitude. Contact us to discuss your options in outfitting your restaurant with custom wall murals that are sure to impress your clientele, and keep them coming back for more.

Custom Wallpaper Design: Benedita Feijó

We are excited to announce that we have teamed up with Portuguese designer Benedita Feijó in order to offer her original custom wallpaper designs to the United States. Feijó, a graphic designer, has designed a line of wallpaper wall murals that we will be offering on two of our websites, Great Wall Online and Wallgazer.

At Great Wall Online, where we feature photographic wall murals and original artwork, we will be featuring Feijó's botanical wallpaper designs. The look of these botanical murals have a collage-like feeling as well, creating a look that is at once both modern and vintage in nature.

At our newest site Wallgazer, we will be offering Feijó's more abstract wall mural designs. One of our favorite murals that she has created is an array of wind turbines. We'll be featuring another blog post about this wallpaper in the the near future.

As she is an accomplished and noted graphic designer in Portugal, Feijó's wallpaper designs are highly polished, and conceptually strong, and we are proud to be able to offer you her wall murals. As with th rest of our custom wallpaper, her designs may be customized to fit your wall dimensions. Look for the addition of these original wallpaper designs to both sites in early June '09.

Custom Wallpaper Imagery: Cityscapes

Custom wallpaper imagery can be inspired by countless sources. One source we write about frequently are architectural elements, pieces of a building's construction that we hone in on and emphasize, leading to a more abstract, conceptual wall mural. Along those lines, though focusing less on specific elements in favor of a more sweeping vista brings us to the cityscape.

Custom wall murals featuring cityscapes capture a similar feeling as architectural details, but the immensity of the view and sheer number of buildings creates a more lively, energetic custom wallpaper installation overall. What's more, the city you choose to feature in your custom wall mural tells a story about who you are, where you come from, or where you want to go.

The cityscape in the wall mural in our inspiration room is New York, easily one of the world's most recognizable skylines. The custom wallpaper is printed almost as black and white with just a hint of a deep periwinkle undertone. The perspective at which the image was captured creates a feeling of being in a skyscraper overlooking Manhattan. The slight distortion of the image gives the wall mural a looseness as it avoids hard, straight lines. We have many cityscape images in our gallery to choose from, or use your own digital image for your very own custom wall mural.

Custom Wallpaper Project: Music Room Wallpaper

If you're fortunate enough to have a spare bedroom in your home that hasn't been claimed as an office or guest bedroom, considering turning it into a music room. A place where you can put on your headphones and maybe for just a few minutes out of the day find peace and unencumbered relaxation. Perhaps you play an instrument as well, perfect for a music room, as a custom wall mural is inspiring as well as beautiful.

The custom wallpaper design shown is a fun homage to stage lighting. Though the light effects in the mural have been modified from their original photographic state, they still give the mural the feeling of being creatively illuminated. This wall mural image seems as if it is taken from the bleary-eyed perspective of an engrossed fan at a concert.

With the wall mural intimating a sense of stage lighting, your speakers set out in front help to bring the faux stage aesthetic full circle; what would any well lit stage do without massive stacks of speakers in the forefront? Perch upon your favorite chair and enjoy your favorite instrument in front of your live concert inspired wall mural; to your friends and family you'll have the look of a professional performer on stage, and your very own music room will be the space where all your rock and roll fantasies come true.

Wallgazer Original Wallpaper Design: Line Up

Photographic wall murals have a visually transporting quality that takes you from one place to another. Our graphic wallpaper murals have a decidedly more understated nature, which can make them easier to weave into your existing decor. A new graphic wall mural design about to launched on our site Wallgazer is called "Line Up."

The main feature of Line Up is a bundle of lines that emerge into the mural as a tight cluster. Quickly and sporadically these lines break apart and start snaking over the whole of the mural. The free flowing lines projecting across the wallpaper give the mural a great sense of motion while still maintaining a less obtrusive, more static role in your decor scheme.

As with most of custom wallpaper projects, this mural can be completely customized to better accentuate your present color palette. The background of the wall mural can be changed to another solid color. The line work can be manipulated as well to whatever color you'd like to accent the mural with. Check out our current Wallgazer designs here.

Custom Wallpaper Installation: The National Guild of Professional Paper Hangers

We dedicate this blog and our professional time to designing and developing the freshest, newest, and highest quality custom wallpaper available. So much time on the front end is dedicated to commissioning a custom wall mural, from selecting the right imagery to considering it's effect on it's audience. Custom wallpaper project dimensions should also taken carefully and deliberately. Once the mural is printed and finished, we package the wallpaper with utmost care to ensure it will be safe during shipment.

With all of this attention and caution taken to procure your custom wallpaper, the last thing you need is for an unqualified wallpaper installer to damage the wall mural in a botched install. To avoid this, we always recommend that our clients seek the aid of a professional wallpaper hanger through the National Guild of Professional Paper Hangers (NGPP). NGPP members adhere to stringent professional and ethical guidelines. Additionally, the NGPP offers insurance programs and other benefits to their members not always readily available to the self-employed.

For the homeowner, the NGPP offers a link on their website to locate a wallpaper installer. Search by zip code and locate a qualified installer as well as their contact info and web address if available. One stand out member shown above is Glen Olsen. He is a member of the Chicago Chapter of the NGPP, find their chapter website here. Glen is shown here installing a custom ceiling mural designed by Pam Carron. It was a complicated job involving numerous sections and contour cut wallpaper elements. However, as a veteran wallpaper hanger, this dedicated member of the NGPP came through for us, the artist and the client, and we couldn't recommend Glen and his fellow guild members more.

Custom Wallpaper Design: Mosaic Tile Wallpaper

One of the specialty lines of custom wallpaper we produce is our Mosaic Tile Wallpaper. Our mosaic tile wallpaper has a number of advantages. First, it looks exactly like real tile, complete with subtle irregularities and grout lines. Several tile looks are available, from rustic glass to tumbled marble. The mosaic tile wall mural shown is designed with the tumbled marble look.

Unlike traditional mosaic tile installations, our wallpaper version is able to be installed in a very short time frame. Our typical custom wallpaper panel size is roughly four and a half feet wide by the full height of your wall. Whereas tile installations, especially complicated mosaics, can take week or months to complete, our wallpaper can be installed in an afternoon. Our tile wallpaper is also highly cost effective. Compared to real mosaic tile and installation fees, the custom wallpaper option is truly budget friendly.

Whereas we have designs of different tile textures in numerous colors at the ready, we can use your own photograph or pattern and transform that into a mosaic tile wallpaper design. This is the final major advantage of our mural wallpaper vs. authentic tile. This wallpaper project works best with an image featuring larger subjects with less detail, as a lot of nuances can be lost when transforming a photo into a mosaic tile wall mural. Visit our Mosaic Tile Wallpaper site to learn more about using your photograph for a custom mural.

Custom Wallpaper Design: Pet Wallpaper

A lot of us here are Great Wall are dog lovers. And like any devoted canine companion, we have hundreds of digital photographs of our beloved pets. As custom wallpaper designers, we love finding ways to use these snapshots of our dogs in creative ways for interior decorating projects.

This wall mural features an English Bull Dog, printed larger than life. In keeping with the retro 50's color palette, the wall mural is tinged with color only on the collar, with a muted swirling pattern, again right out of the 50's.

This is a great example of how we can use a wall mural to blend multiple design goals to achieve a single cohesive statement. The wallpaper's mash up of retro colors and themes with pet photography is just the tip of the iceberg of possibilities. Say you're a sci-fi fan; we can take your out of this world dog and drop him over a scene of alien planets or a billowing nebula. The point is custom wallpaper allows you to decorate your home exactly as you choose. Cat murals may be printed as well, just don't tell our dogs.

Custom Wallpaper Project: Architectural Elements

This custom wallpaper installation is another in our series focusing on our obsession with architectural elements. Wall murals like this have an engaging quality due to the trompe l'oeil effect of the fire escape. Trompe l'oeil is essentially an optical illusion, giving the appearance of three dimensionality on a two dimensional surface. In this mural, the fire escape, doors and AC units appear to actually be positioned on this interior living room wall. Shadows and highlights help to buttress the illusion of three dimensionality, making the custom wall mural very present in the room.

One artist that works brilliant trompe l'oeil illusions is Julian Beever. Beever specializes in sidewalk drawings that not only look real in person, but photograph incredibly well also. Check out more of his work here to see some incredible examples of trompe l'oeil sidewalk drawings and wall murals.

As we've been offering custom wallpaper online for almost 5 years, a lot of friends and family have sent us examples of Beever's work. His art has been an inspiration for creating custom wallpaper installations featuring trompe l'oeil techniques. Though our custom wall murals are digitally produced and not created by hand, they can still have the same awe inspiring effect. The depth and life that a trompe l'oeil mural has will be the focal point of any space, contact us to learn more about commissioning your own custom wallpaper project.

Custom Wallpaper Design: Pink Girl's Room

So your daughter is old old enough to graduate into her first bedroom. She loves pink, but she's not into fairies or princesses or Barbie. What to do? Focus on color and motion with a custom wallpaper installation to create a lively pink atmosphere.

Granted, most little girls who are into pink may very well be fans of the aforementioned bastions on pinkness. But if you're a style savvy parent, this custom wall mural is a much more chic alternative than mass produced commercial icons. The bedroom furniture in the inspiration image is a light bubblegum pink with white and orange accents. The mural picks up beautifully on these colors. The wall mural also provides a strong backdrop for the bed with it's brighter duvet.

This custom wallpaper installation also capitalizes on some serious motion. The blur created by the lights whizzing by gives the wallpaper a bright, energetic feeling; the perfect accompaniment to a carefree pink environment. This mural does remind us of spinning 'round and 'round as a child; a little disorienting but very fun.

Custom wall murals that feature less iconic imagery can be maintained and updated as your daughter's taste evolves. The wacky furniture and whimsical foot stool may leave, but the wall mural will translate well in the room's decor all the way through the teenage years. Fickle as children's taste may be, this wallpaper will provide years of enjoyment.

New Wallgazer Wallpaper Design: Library

Here is a first look at one of our newest wall mural designs for Wallgazer, entitled "Library." This new design created by Michael Hanlon gives a clean, graphic interpretation to shelves stacked with books or LPs. Library is a clever way to adorn your wall with custom wallpaper to mimic the feel of a well stocked study. Currently, you can find kitschy library wallpaper stuffed with old world tomes and globes, very stale and surely stodgy.

Keep your space young and modern with this wall mural that speaks volumes though it still maintains stark minimalism. The shapes and patterns created by the shelf and media elements in the mural wallpaper give it a lot of visual interest. The bar of yellow gives a simple but strong focal point to the mural to break up the repetition of the wallpaper design.

As with most custom wall murals we print, the wallpaper design can be altered to better fit your present decor. The background of the mural can colored to bring in your existing color palate. The shelf and media components can easily be altered as well. This is the true beauty of custom wallpaper: you're not simply picking a pattern out of a book; this mural or wallpaper installation is tailored specifically to your walls and decor. Interested in using your own design or photograph for custom wallpaper? Visit our main site and browse our custom order page to learn more about the process.

Enhancing Retail Space with Custom Wallpaper: KNYEW Las Vegas

Creating a brand from the ground up is always a challenge when done right. After hours of design time and countless revisions, you finally have a logo, look and feel that will set the tone for your retail operation. Imparting the spirit of your business into your retail space can still be a challenge, even with the branding package complete. Enhance your retail space with custom wallpaper to not only reinforce the themes and attitudes of your business, but to simply create an aesthetically pleasing space as well.

The image above illustrates the successful union of using custom wallpaper imagery to highlight an overall business aesthetic/attitude. This custom wall mural was printed for Knyew, a clothing boutique in Las Vegas, which was founded by two internationally known DJs and a sneaker guru. The clothing and shoes Knyew offers are infused with a retro street vibe. To create an ecumenical space for such items, Knyew decided to use multiple custom wall murals to decorate the store. The image above shows the main custom wallpaper installation behind the store's cash wrap. The photo in black and white has just enough film grain present to make the wall mural look truly vintage. There could be no better custom wallpaper imagery available to visually reconnect the viewer with the time and place where hip hop began to evolve.

All together, the branding, the merchandise, and finally the decor and wall murals merge to create an overall aesthetic that is clear and salient, that perfectly sums up the attitudes and style of the owners. And while the stage is set to create a cohesive environment, the wall murals also look incredible, and flesh out a lot of space, resulting in a retail space that looks full but not overdone. Check out Knyew's website here and preview their latest collections. The next time you make it to Sin City, definitely check out Knyew's boutique as well as their custom wallpaper installations.

Custom Wallpaper Project: Faux Garden Atrium

Interior office spaces lacking light and windows can feel cramped and constricting. Toss in some low ceilings and fluorescent overhead lighting and it's a wonder anything gets done. A great solution to opening up a space without embarking on a major construct project is to use custom wallpaper to create a faux garden atrium.

The look that we've created and displayed encapsulates our goals in creating an atrium from merely wallpaper. Just as a real garden atrium, our mural wallpaper atrium features greens that are vibrant and energizing. The mural starts on the side wall, and continues above the seating area on the ceiling, giving that sense of openess you'd feel from an authentic atrium. The exaggerated scale of the palm fronds also brings a little modernity to the wallpaper design. In short, what was a simple space before now thrives with the feeling of life.

Of course, we could produce an atrium custom wall mural that would be much more literal. The murals would contain plants and flowers at their typical life size. We would also mimic glass and window framing to flesh out the atrium structure. The final illusion the custom wall mural would need is a blue sky above to cap off the look. Either way, literal or abstract, custom wallpaper can truly change your environment. Keep your custom wallpaper atrium super and green and ask about our wallpaper that is produced on material that has LEED points and contains 20% post-consumer waste.

Custom Wallpaper Imagery: More Random Photos

We thought we'd close another week out with a custom wallpaper installation featuring a more random image. The image, which is an aerial shot, consists of multiple shipping containers stacked on one another. We love the color combinations in this mural, from the bright and rusty reds, cool grays, as well as the blues that really pop out and make the mural come alive.

These images that seem to come from left field truly create some of the most striking murals. The way the differently colored containers are interspersed creates an interesting, random pattern, very befitting for a modern wallpaper design. There's a bit of whimsy here too; the extreme vantage point gives the shipping containers a childlike, toy block quality that makes the mural more engaging than your usual stack of commercial shipping conveyances.

Unexpected imagery for a custom wall mural is a perfect fit for anyone with a quirky design aesthetic. For those with such idiosyncratic leanings, a custom wallpaper installation utilizing your random photo shows you have a unique decorating style, after all, no one in the rest of the world will have the same mural. Originality never looked so good.