New Wallpaper Wall Mural: Disintegration

This is a new custom wallpaper design we are about to add to the new website. It's got the look of traditional wallpaper, but it's really a wallpaper wall mural. The static pattern begins to fall apart, or disintegrate, as it is so aptly named.

I love the way the petals of the floral pattern look like they're floating off into space, much like seeds being blown off of a dandelion.

This pattern will be available next month once we launch our new website. We're still offering the same custom wallpaper services, but with new and even more striking wall mural imagery, so be sure to check back soon!

New Custom Wallpaper Image: 70's Surreal Sunset

Yesterday we featured one of our upcoming wall mural images. Today's post highlights another new wall mural image we will soon be offering in addition to our custom wallpaper services. The image is a sunset that is obscured by gnarled twisted trees that are reaching into the sky. The coloring gives the image the feeling as though you were wearing rose tinted glasses. We love the nod that this mural gives to the more kitschy murals that were popular in the 70's.

New Website Coming Soon!

We're busily working on a new design for our main website, www.GreatWallOnline.com. We're streamlining our order process, and adding a bunch of new wall murals, including this goth-inspired wall mural we featured as an inspiration piece on our blog. We'll also be adding a brand new line of childrens wall murals. In addition to the new wall mural images, we'll still be offering our custom wallpaper services. Updates to follow!

Custom Wallpaper Featuring Wood Textures

Custom wallpaper can feature just about any image, design, or texture. A look we love to experiment with is wood textures; the natural patterns created by swirling bark and liner designs of wood grain are both graphic and organic, an incredible combination. The rugged natural look of wood is even more compelling when juxtaposed with clean lined modern furnishings. As in the inspiration room above, the rustic wood wall mural stands out yet still manages to blend in with the contemporary room setting.
Another stacked wood wall mural, with a graphic overlay that has been ghosted over the wood image. This mural is available for purchase in our Exclusive Designs category of wall murals.
A more simplified wooden texture wall mural, available from our Natural Patterns line of murals. As always, if you have your own image of a compelling wood texture, we can produce that as your very own custom wall mural.

Custom Wallpaper: Unexpected Urban Art

Custom wall mural inspiration can come from an infinite amount of sources. Today's custom wallpaper post examines unexpected urban art, in other words, finding beauty in the ordered chaos of modern city living. The mural in our inspiration room is an image of the remains of countless handbills and posters that have been adhered over a wall.

Over time, the layering created by the numerous advertisements has created a very textural look. On top of that, the strips created by remains of ripped paper give the image a wonderful abstract quality. You may have passed by a similar scene and never thought that it could be a wallcovering, but that's exactly what we do, and the type of image we love to see produced as a custom wall mural. Contact us for more idea designs and ways to use your own digital photograph as your very own wall mural.

Custom Wallpaper Inspiration: Satellite Imagery

Today's custom wallpaper post is inspired by satellite imagery. In our Space Wall Murals image gallery, you can find some cool wallpaper murals of different nebulas, constellations, planets, and comets. But when a satellite turns it's gaze back toward earth, you get some of the funkiest natural patterns and anomalies that create gorgeous murals.

The image in our inspiration room is one of my favorite space murals. It is a satellite shot of the Ganges River Delta. The river forms a massive delta as it flows into the Bay of Bengal. The resulting look from space is a tendril-like collection of crooked lines that jag there way across the mural. Contact us for more satellite custom wall mural options!

Here's another custom wallpaper post to get you inspired about using images of architecture for custom photographic wall murals. Yesterday's post used the Brooklyn Bridge as an inspiration point, but the look of the mural in our inspiration room is much more abstract.

Ultra modern architecture like this makes for a very unique wall mural. The building's skin is comprised of a series of metal discs. The undulating pattern of these discs give the custom wallpaper a lot of movement and energy, and the blues give the piece an overall tranquility. Take a look around you with fresh eyes; you may just notice a building that could be perfect for your very own custom wall mural.

Wall Murals Featuring Architectural Elements: Bridges

One of my favorite image inspiration sources is architecture. Structures that we see everyday can have such a different appearance through the lens of a camera. With the right perspective and vision, ordinary objects can take on new life, and a custom wall mural is the perfect way to display that vision.

The custom wall mural in our inspiration room features the Brooklyn Bridge. An iconic structure, the Brooklyn Bridge is certainly one of the most recognizable bridges in the world. But the change in perspective gives the image of the bridge an almost cathedral-like feel, with it's arches soaring. Many of us have photographs similar to this, contact us to learn how to turn your digital photographs into stunning custom wallpaper.

Custom Wallpaper Imagery: Creating a Penthouse View

Today's custom wallpaper post will show you how you can use an image to create your very own penthouse view. Whether you live on the top floor or the ground floor, a custom wall mural of a city skyline can create the feeling that your space is high in the clouds. How else can you get a million dollar view of downtown Manhattan in your studio apartment in St. Louis? The above image in our inspiration room illustrates the concept: using the right image for a wall mural engenders your room with feel of living in a skyscraper.
Another Manhattan skyline cityscape mural, more of an all-encompassing panoramic wall mural.
This shot we've featured before, but again illustrates the possibility of decorating with a skyline view. This wall mural showcases the skyline of Chicago as seen from Lake Michigan.
Finally, one more image from our installations gallery from our website. Again, we're using a cityscape wall mural, but as opposed to giving you the impression of being in a penthouse in the sky, you get the feeling of being being nestled in the middle of Central Park with the skyline of New York looming around you.

Options abound when decorating your walls with custom wallpaper featuring a cityscape. Contact us to learn more.

Framing Custom Wall Murals with Wooden Molding

Wainscoting and decorative wood moldings can be the perfect finishing accent to a custom printed wall mural. The image in the inspiration room above shows how you can use a room's pre-existing molding to frame out a wall mural. As opposed to filling the entire wall, the molding acts as a frame, creating the feel of a hugely oversized art piece.

The same look can be created with smaller vignettes in multiple molding frames on a single wall. The same custom wall mural image could be segmented out, or multiple images could be used to tell a visual story.

Using Vintage Images for Photographic Wall Murals

Today's custom wallpaper post celebrates vintage photography as an inspiration point for photographic wall murals. Vintage photographic images can come from any number of sources; antique shops, garage sales, or they may already be in your possession. Another great vintage photo resource is Wikipedia Commons, which has a large collection of royalty free vintage images that are perfectly suited for custom photographic wall murals.
The image above is a shot by NASA, showing the vortex created by an airplane speeding along. A very different take on an airplane in a vintage photograph, but just another example of how there is almost always the perfect image out there for a mural based on individual preferences.

Custom Wallpaper Inspiration: Windows

If your living space is lacking the expansive view you desire, use custom wallpaper to bring in as many windows as you want. Check out the inspiration room. The custom wall mural uses an image of an office building with windows in unexpected patterns. Then to add a little more visual interest to the mural, the image was flipped on it's side. Perfect for apartment dwellers and dorms, adding windows is simple with custom wallpaper. And with our repositionable wallpaper, you can install your wall mural and take it with you when you move.

Custom Wallpaper Imagery: Chinese Artwork

Here is another interesting idea for a custom wall mural using your own artwork. Specifically, vintage Chinese artwork. Perhaps you have an old painting or a digital image you captured, either way, a wall mural featuring Chinese artwork is sure to amaze.

The watercolor painting shown in the inspiration room has a nice lightness to it, especially with mist enveloping all the mountains. This custom wallpaper installation is a perfect addition to a cozy breakfast nook or dining room, where a feeling of peace and calm is always appreciated.

We have an assortment of Far Eastern imagery at our main website, such as the image below:

Find this bamboo pathway wall mural available for purchase at numerous sizes on your choice of material here: Over at our other site Wallgazer, we feature a wall mural design called "Samurai Cutout". Obviously we transition here from China to Japan, and the subject matter of this mural is much more playful and kitschy than environmental. "Samurai Cutout" can be purchased through Wallgazer here.

Custom Surfing Inspired Wall Mural

Custom wallpaper can help you decorate in a highly personal way. A lot of people enjoy decorating their home with artwork and artifacts that display their hobbies or interests. You're hard pressed to not see a sports fan's commemorative plaque or poster of a cherished team; outdoorsmen love their Terry Redlin, while artists' walls are lined with a permanent retrospective.

In today's custom wallpaper paper post, we are offering an alternative; a more subtle way to share your interests in a way that might not be so heavy handed. The custom wall mural in the inspiration room features a wave, a tube wave to be exact. This is the type of wave that curls over onto itself, creating a void in which a surfer will move through.

This type of image not only looks appealing, but shares your love of surfing with a reserved ambiguity that creates a true conversation piece. There are plenty of other activities that a mural can accentuate in such a way. For instance, an abstract rock texture wall mural would be perfect for a mountain climber. Whatever your interest, custom wallpaper can create a space that tastefully portrays your personality.

Wall Mural Imagery: California

During the middle of April, I left the confines of the office and headed out to California. While the day to day custom wallpaper operations were handled by my all-star staff, I was able to enjoy the Coachella Music Festival with friends. The trip included flying into San Francisco to meet with friends, whereupon we road tripped down to the desert east of Los Angeles. The road trip took about 8 1/2 hours.

Along the way I snapped a photo of a landscape that is perfect for a custom wall mural. Though altered from it's original orientation, the image is shown in the inspiration room above. After we'd made it out of the metro LA area and wound through the desert, we began to notice a string of burned out trees that were uprooted and seemingly carefully stacked along the roadside.

Perhaps is was a controlled burn to minimize naturally occurring wildfires. Whatever the case, the stark, leafless limbs cut a very interesting silhouette across the perfectly blue, cloudless sky. When preparing the wall mural image for this post, it seemed like a good idea to flip the image; the line of mountain and sky looked more interesting flipped, while the burnt tree limbs appear to have a dripping-ink like characteristic pouring down the wall. I caught a lot of other good shots along the way that I'll share in the future.

Custom Wall Mural Inspiration: Architecture

One of my obsessions when it comes to custom wall mural imagery is architecture. Be it an ultra-modern expanse of glass building skin, or a worn painted brick facade, there are limitless possibilities when using architectural elements as a jumping off point for a printed mural. Of course, there are plenty of buildings that can be showcased as a whole, but what really excites me is using just a portion of a building, abstracting it, until the element seems more like a modern pattern than an actual structure.

Take the custom wallpaper installation in the inspiration room for example. The photograph is of an apartment building in Australia that has undulating terraces off the face of the building. The image was then flipped 90 degrees clockwise, making the serpentine balconies run vertically as opposed to horizontally. The change in perspective gives the mural an even more surreal flare.

A custom wall mural makes for an outstanding adornment to your bedroom area. And while an over-sized headboard can be dramatic, substituting a wall mural such as this for the headboard is even more striking. Check out some additional examples of architecturally inspired wall murals that we've featured in the past, and contact us to learn more about your own custom wallpaper project.

Custom Wallpaper Imagery: Vintage Control Panel

Happy Friday to all of you. We're celebrating the end of the week with a custom wallpaper installation featuring a vintage control panel. The connection? As our fingers anxiously hover over our shut-down buttons, I can't help but still marvel at how much simpler our lives are due to modern technology.

While one could easily make the opposing argument that technology has served to lower our quality of life and interactions with "real" human beings, just think where you'd be if your home or work computer looked like this little honey featured in our wall mural in the inspiration room. If technology is a necessary evil, at least we can have the latest and sleekest gadgets to divide our time.

So this wall mural is clearly an homage to those early days when computers took up an entire room, and coding was done by hand on index cards. The mural has a bit of a steampunk sensibility, what with the archaic looking knobs on a rusted out cover panel. We've come a long way baby, and this custom wall mural is the perfect illustration of that.

Custom Wallpaper Imagery: Movement

In the title of this post, "movement" refers to the inner workings of a watch or clock, not motion in general. The movement specifically refers to all of the moving parts, save for the clock hands, that keep your clocks ticking away. I've had a gear-inspired wall mural in mind for some time but finally just came across this perfect image to bring the idea to life.

All the gears, pulleys and wheels create a look not unlike a bank vault, especially when you consider that this macro shot is enormous compared to the real thing. I think any disassembled machinery has the makings of a perfect custom wallpaper application. I did a post a while back concerning circuit board custom wallpaper, and received a lot of positive feedback from it. Apparently there's a lot of you out there that enjoyed destroying your toys as youths as well!

I initially wanted to crop the image further, but the circular outline around the watch's inner workings framed the furniture arrangement so well I kept it as is. How cool would this wall mural be in your home? Showing your love of the mechanical and orderly, while at the same time also embracing your aesthetically-minded side. How well rounded can you get? Have an idea for your own custom wallpaper installation? Contact us to begin your project.

Create Custom Wallpaper Using Vintage Fabric Patterns

We most typically print custom wall murals that are based on photographic imagery or artwork. But one source of custom wallpaper inspiration we love to recommend is vintage fabric. Be it art deco-inspired prints from the 20's, or funky psychedelic prints from the 60's and 70's, you're bound to find some interesting options.

It's fun to play with the scale of the pattern you select. While a small scale pattern may appeal to you immediately, we like when the size of the pattern repeat is exaggerated, created a larger than life wallpaper design, such as the custom wallpaper shown in our inspiration room.

There are many sources online to find vintage fabrics that can be transformed into custom wallpaper, such as ReproDepot Fabrics. There is more than likely a wealth of viable patterns at your local Salvation Army or thrift store. It never hurts to pay a visit to your Mom's and check out her old sewing box; even a small scrap of vintage fabric can be used to create custom wallpaper. It's been a while since you've called her anyway, I'm sure she'd love to hear from you...

Custom Wallpaper Imagery: Use Your Own Artwork

The custom wall mural image we are featuring today is a detail of a piece of ancient Chinese artwork. The original piece is a watercolor work on rice paper. This mural embodies one of our key phrases here at Great Wall Custom Coverings: "changing the way we live with art."

Taking a piece of artwork and transforming it into a custom wallpaper installation takes what would be merely an element of a decor scheme and creates an undeniable focal point. As opposed to a smaller piece of art, a wall mural demands attention in a way that typical wall art simply can never attain. The artwork becomes a presence that is not only enjoyed, but lived with in a highly salient nature.

And gentleman, I'm not sure if you'd typically decorate with a floral, but this is one highly masculine botanical. The blues and grays keep this floral based mural much more neutral than typical flowery prints, while still retaining the softness you'd expect from natural imagery.

Transforming Your Walls with Custom Wallpaper

One of our fearless designers put together a quick movie showing a dining room before and after a custom wallpaper installation.

We love playing with scale, so instead of a small botanical style wallpaper pattern, we took the scale of the foliage and made it larger than life, giving the dining room a completely brand new feeling.

Wall murals can be used to dress all four walls of your room, or even on single wall for an unexpected accent. Check out our main site to learn more about our custom wallpaper services.

Custom Wallpaper Imagery: Spring Inspiration

Spring is finally here! We're celebrating the arrival of the season with this custom wallpaper installation featuring an assortment of shades of green.

The green in the wall mural is provided by rows of plants in the rural farmland. The image is an aerial photograph, an excellent source for wall mural imagery. The budding plots of land create an interesting geometric backdrop for this living space.

Aerial shots of cities offer additional geometric alternatives, while aerials of mountains and bodies of water offer softer, less pattern driven murals. Use your own image our check out our image gallery, we can also assist with image research for the perfect custom wall mural.

Artists Producing Custom Wallpaper: Solomina Ray Design

There's a number of artists out there who are using our custom wallpaper services to market their artwork to brand new audiences. After all, an entire wall filled with an artist's work can have considerably more impact than a smaller framed piece.

One such artist is Sally Henderson of Solomina Ray Design. Her Piece "Compassion Bubbles" is shown on the right. As a muralist, painter, and product developer, Solomina Ray Design, www.solominaray.com, delivers high impact, abstract art and art products for home, business, and film productions. How great would this pattern be in a light and lively room, perhaps even a nursery.

We highly recommend original art by Sally Henderson, MFA, if you want your rooms to vibrate with joy, inspiration and excitement. “Beauty and Passion” are her watch words. Lovely, irrational and bold, the Solomina Ray brand excites your soul. Niche: Deluxe homes, film set designs.
Queries: solominaray@yahoo.com

Bring the Outdoors In with Custom Wallpaper

Spring is just around the corner and all I can think about is green green green. There's nothing like the vibrant green grass of Spring, and we thought we might celebrate that with a wall mural that pulls a bit of nature from the outdoors onto your wall.

We love macro shots around here, so our featured wall mural is a close up of dandelion seeds. There's a nice interplay of the softness of the downy seed with the hard lines of the stalks. The green that peeks in through the background is a lovely fresh shade, which feels very springlike to us.

A custom wallpaper installation like this would not only be an excellent way to decorate in anticipation for Spring, but a constant reminder of warmer times during the doldrums of Winter. So until the snow melts completely and buds are on the trees, we hope this wall mural will inspire a sense of Spring in the meantime.

Custom Wallpaper Design: McNally Jackson Books

Over the years we've helped clients put their most off the wall ideas onto their walls. Today's entry features a bookstore in New York, where the owner had the inspired idea to create a custom wallpaper pattern to dress the walls of the shop's cafe area. The pattern was created using imagery of open books that the client provided.

The bookstore is McNally Jackson Books, located at 52 Prince St., New York, NY 10012. The owner of the shop had a clear vision of what she wanted to accomplish, it was up to us to make the custom wallpaper a reality. We created a standard repeat using her photos which slightly varied in shades, which kept the design more interesting, less static. The open books give the wallpaper a trompe l'oeil effect; it actually looks like real books are splayed open across the walls.

When using a custom wallpaper installation in a business, one must always be thinking of the impact of the wallpaper on the viewer. In this case, the custom wallpaper couldn't be more properly suited for the space, and the book theme easily carries the written word out from the bookstore into the cafe. This was one of our favorite projects of '09, we wish McNally Jackson Books continued success!