Custom Wallpaper Imagery: Random Photos

We're closing out another week with a custom wallpaper installation inspired by random photos; the type of imagery that you wouldn't necessarily think of using as a wall mural, but can create unexpectedly unique environments.

In the inspiration room, the image we used is an old and weathered section of wood that was perhaps part of an old building that has fallen into disrepair. The coarseness of the wood brings an interesting texture to the table, and the numerous layers of chipping paint add to the tactile feel. The true centerpiece of the wall mural though is the splash of graffiti in yellow spray paint running through the wood, giving the mural a real focal point, breaking up the monotony of the weathered wood.

You may or may not have captured an image like this. A simple detail like the inspiration wall mural is easy to pass by without noticing. But when you take a moment to inspect the random details that surround you, a plethora of abstract imagery is readily available that are perfect for a completely one of a kind custom wall mural.

Custom Wallpaper Project: Decorating Your Office

Congratulations. You've finally made it. Now that the cubicle you once inhabited is a distant memory, it's time to make that office with the view your very own. If you're interested in decorating with custom wallpaper instead of decorating your office space with mass produced artwork, we have just the right material for you. In this day and age when company loyalty is, well, non-existent, it's wise to decorate a space with a wall mural you can take with you should you part ways with your employer.

A custom wall mural printed on repositionable wallpaper ensures you'll have the most unique and talked about office in the building, as well as the ability to take down the wallpaper and reinstall it in a new space should you get the corner office down the hall. We featured this material is a previous entry concerning dorm and apartment living, but the same principal applies: your custom wallpaper can be jsut as mobile as you are.

The custom wall mural featured in the inspiration room offers a calm, somber retreat from the usual harried reality of office life. This can be your very own vacation photo, or an image from one of our galleries. So now that you've gotten to the office that you dreamed about while toiling away paying your dues, take your decor to the next level and make a statement far greater than those with just some family photos and plants nestled on their desks: go big with a custom wall mural to highlight your achievements; you've earned it.

Using Custom Wallpaper With Out Of The Box Elements

When using a custom wallpaper installation in your home, it's important to keep in mind how the wallpaper will interact with your present decor scheme. But if you're starting over with a brand new themed room, you can purchase your out of the box decor elements to meld harmoniously with your custom wall mural.

Take for instance the inspiration room above. Our client wanted to create a desert themed environment that was in keeping with a very popular CG film. Though we couldn't brand the wall mural with characters from the film, the client easily found mass produced decals to place on top of the wallpaper, getting the scenic effect that was desired, with the characters that his son loved.

Above and beyond the wall treatments, the client also brought in other decor pieces and furnishings to fully complete the look. You'll notice in the image that our client also painted out the ceiling to extend the wall mural overhead. In all, this is a perfect representation of the successful outcome of marrying custom wallpaper and store bought accessories. Contact us to learn more about our process and what we can do for your themed room.

Custom Wallpaper Inspiration: Forest Scenes

When we're not toiling away designing and printing custom wallpaper, we love to get outdoors, one of the most relaxing activities. Whether you're a runner, hiker, or full blown back country backpacker, you're hard pressed to find the same level of peace and quiet you find when you're alone in the wilderness. Take that feeling you get on the trail and transplant that into your home with a forest inspired custom wallpaper installation.

Like people, forests seem to have different moods as the day goes by. At daybreak, bright and clear with lots of activity; like a real morning person. As the day draws to a close, the pace slackens with thoughts of relaxing. The custom wall mural in our inspiration room has this calm evening feel, with fleeting rays of lights peeking in through the foliage.

A great way to literally bring the outdoors in, consider using your own photography of wooded scenes. This is the perfect way to personalize your home with custom decor, and will surely give your space a calming atmosphere. Take photographs of your favorite trail and have a wall mural to keep that space close to you, even while you're caught up in the rigors of day to day life.

Custom Wallpaper Design: Passport Wallpaper

Today's custom wallpaper inspiration source is your trusty old passport. Whether you've been to our neighbors Canada or Mexico, or all the way around the world, your passport tells the story of your travels through official stamps that more often than not include the date of your passage. Why not commemorate your travels with a custom wall mural based on an image of your passport?

Different countries of course have different styles of passports. The passport shown in the inspiration room's wall mural is from France. Loosely collaged pages from the passport create a unique and random pattern of stamps and scribbles. The cool oranges in the wall mural mesh well with the room's decor, the slight busyness of the mural tempered by a more reserved room layout overall.

The US passport is quite interesting as well, in blues augmented with reds and purples. Of course, the more stamps the better to flesh out your custom wallpaper design, but don't worry if your passport is a little thin; we can digitally add in stamps from other countries to help flesh out the look. Adding in additional items to the custom wall mural is encouraged as well: photos, souvenirs and trinkets that remind you of your past travels could be layered into the wallpaper easily.

Custom Wallpaper Inspiration: Spiritual Imagery

The custom wallpaper imagery inspiration we're focusing on today is spiritual imagery. Though you may not want to bring up religion at dinner party, you can certainly feel comfortable displaying a religious custom wall mural that accentuates your decor in your own home. Regardless if you're outspoken or more meek about your spiritual life, a wallpaper wall mural will speak volumes about your faith.

For instance, in the inspiration room we're featuring an image of Buddha. This specific Buddha image is a photograph of a statue in Thailand from an ancient temple. This is the type of image that you may have captured on a trip overseas. We recently met a modern day pilgrim who made the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, a trek by foot beginning in France and concluding in Spain. That says devotion in any faith, and the imagery he captured was perfect for a wall mural or giclee to commemorate the experience.

Whichever faith you belong to, a custom wallpaper installation will surely be an inspiring addition to your home. Or, if this type of mural would be a good fit for your house of worship as opposed to your home, know that we've previously printed a number of custom wall murals for Churches and Synagogues across the country and around the world. The balancing act is creating a mural that is at once beautiful and engaging, while not being either heavy handed nor trivializing the content. Contact us to learn more.

Custom Event Décor by Great Wall Custom Coverings

We updated our homepage recently to give a better snapshot of the creative nature of our company. Of course we design and produce custom wallpaper, but we also produce custom event decor as well. We do a lot of bar and bat mitzvah celebrations and themed corporate events, but lately we've been contributing decor pieces for weddings. Most importantly, our work was recognized and included in TNT's first reality show, "Wedding Day."

The premise of the show is to give deserving couples who have overcome adversity the wedding of their dreams. A great concept that was executed brilliantly by Mark Burnett Productions, who've produced numerous successful programs including "Survivor." The happy couple we helped decorate for was right here in Detroit, and they were given an unbelievable Celtic inspired wedding, complete with a replica of a Celtic church in the Westin Book Cadillac's grand ballroom, complete with pews, faux stone walls, and faux stained glass panels which we designed and helped produce. We also produced an image of the Celtic Tree of Life as a floor graphic to adorn the dance floor, as well as table runners featuring artwork by the bride's young students.

The show airs July 18th 2009 at 9:00 AM EST on TNT. The image displayed above is not from the wedding, but was from a party that we decorated for an art auction house. They wanted to use custom backdrops to create a turn of the century Paris feel. We accomplished this with photography, as well as trompe l'oil elements to create the facades, windows, and statues. Similar techniques that we employ for custom wallpaper installations, but on backdrops that go up and come down in a single day. Check our our event decor website for more examples of our backdrop work, and tune in to TNT to watch our national television premier!

Custom Wallpaper: Architectural Elements

If you've followed this blog, you know that architectural elements are some of our favorite custom wallpaper image inspirations. In keeping with this tradition, we're offering another inspiration room featuring an architectural wall mural. Instead of focusing on a detail in a facade or a specific material, this mural depicts a large apartment complex in Germany shot from afar.

Initially, the image was much more colorful. We muted the colors of the mural to blend more with the dominant neutral tones of the inspiration room. Taking the image to black and white would also be a good idea for this space. Additionally, the layout of the building in the mural has a slightly uneven tempo, which is a nice counterpoint to the perfect symmetry of the furniture placement.

Another clever element of this custom wallpaper installation is that when viewing the mural, one gets the impression of being elevated, like having a bird's eye view from a high rise building. This is a great way to add an additional feeling of space to a smaller room. Mirrors can always accomplish this task as well, but the unique feeling of space that an architectural wall mural can offer is exciting new way to create volume in a room.

Custom Wallpaper Inspiration: Northern Lights

Today's featured wall mural invites you to capture the mysterious beauty of the northern lights as a custom wallpaper installation. The aurora borealis, which is most often viewed around the North pole, has been an inspiration to us. Growing up in Northern Michigan, we were lucky enough to see the northern lights on occasion. Hence, the unearthly glow of the northern lights has long been an inspiration.

The custom wall mural we're featuring in the inspiration room features the northern lights in a green hue, offset by the final remains of sunlight disappearing behind mountains in the distance. This gives the mural several strong, independent fields of color. The angle at which the northern lights are presenting gives the wall mural a great sense of motion as well.

With custom wallpaper, you can view the northern lights in your home everyday, even if you live nowhere near the North pole. The lights can appear green as in the inspiration room, but they can also shift to blues, reds, and combinations that create heavenly gradients. A wall mural featuring the northern lights will inherently have an abstract, artistic feel, perfect for dressing up a room with an original focal point.

Custom Wallpaper Inspiration: Car Flame Decals

Here is a custom wallpaper installation for all the car lovers out there. Specifically, the car buffs who love flame decals and the like. Hand painted flame decals have been used to give vehicles an edgy, hot look for years. Recently, commercial printers have been producing self-adhesive vinyl flame decals that are easy to install and are more cost effective than hand painted work. Now, take the look of flame decals off the car and get the look on your wall with a custom wall mural.

The flame imagery for the wall mural can be fully customized. The look in our inspiration room is photorealistic, a close up shot of swirling flames. You may opt for a mural that features more graphic inspired illustrated flames. Either way, the look that you've loved on cars is now available as a wallpaper for your home, business, even the garage.

With the advent of digitally printed vehicle graphics, many styles other than flames have become popular. Barbed wire, skulls, and wild line work are popular as well. Any of these inspiration points can be easily translated form a vehicle wrap to a custom wall mural. With murals printed on high quality materials, you'll love the fact that your wallpaper mural will need hardly any maintenance over the years, time you can spend working on and maintaining your automobile. Need more inspiration? Contact us for ideas and image research to make your very own decal inspired mural.

Custom Wallpaper: Just The Right Fit

Custom wallpaper allows you to decorate like never before with imagery that you never thought could be produced as wallpaper. And while we often blog about flights of fancy with wall mural image choices, there is also a very pragmatic, useful side to custom wallpaper installations as well.

Take for instance the install image we're featuring. Our client had an exact spot that she needed to fill in her home. She had the perfect image to use, a shot from her own garden. We simply needed to crop the image to fit the space. Instead of printing the image on wallpaper, it was printed on artist canvas and stretched over non-warping foam board, aka giclee. Hence, this troublesome spot that was always hard to fill has suddenly become the focal point of the room.

Our custom wallpaper service is invaluable for similar circumstances: alcoves, end walls, areas above chair rails, spaces that aren't always the most accommodating for artwork can come alive with a custom printed wall mural. Since all of our work is custom, there is no need for concern about awkward sizes or angles; these obstacles are easy to circumvent and are solved on a case by case basis. Do you have an odd space that you need to address in your home? Contact us to learn more about using a custom wallpaper solution for your hard to decorate areas.

Custom Wallpaper Design: Asian Accents

Custom wallpaper projects featuring Asian imagery are some of our most popular sellers. Be it a wall mural featuring bamboo forests, Zen rock gardens, or alphabetic characters, there are plenty of options for you to choose from. We offer a full line of Asian inspired wall murals on our main website, Great Wall Online.

There, you'll find an assortment of wall mural imagery that is very environmental in focus. The wallpaper wall mural we're featuring in the inspiration room focuses on a detail of a Chinese tile wall mural. The colorful tiles combine to create a dragon in blues and greens with accents of red, which help tie the mural into the room, pulling out the red hues of the ornate chairs.

Your own photographs of a trip abroad would certainly be worth while considering. A scenic shot like the Asian inspired wall murals on our site would work well, or go for a more idiosyncratic look with a mural that features a detail or element from a photo that interests you. If you don't have the right image but you can envision the wall mural you want, contact us and we can assist you with image research.

Decorating With Outdoor Art

Now that the 4th has officially passed, it's starting to really feel like Summer. Here in Metro Detroit, it always takes a little longer to feel the heat, but now that it's here, all we want to do is spend time outdoors. Whereas we usually blog about using custom wallpaper installations to decorate your home, today we're focusing on dressing up your exterior spaces with custom printed outdoor wall art.

Our outdoor wall art is possible due to the fact that we use materials and printing processes that create prints that are viable outdoors for 5+ years. Our inks are waterproof, and highly resistant to UV light. In addition, we laminate the print which is a self-adhesive vinyl, then mount that to a 1/4" rigid plastic that is highly impact resistant. A lot of commercial lingo that basically equates to a beautiful but enduring piece of artwork for you to enjoy for many years.

Our inspiration setting, an outdoor patio with potted bamboo, seemed to beckon for more of the same. The outdoor wall art features a photograph of bamboo in varying widths and tones of greens, which coordinate perfectly with the outdoor furniture. As with our custom wall murals and wallpaper, the image used to create the custom wall art is completely up to you. Find a treasured image from your personal photographs, or check out our website for imagery or assistance in tracking down the right photograph for your project.