Transform Your Home with a Wall Mural: A Step-by-Step Guide
A wall mural sounds like a big project, and in one way it is: it changes a room more than any piece of furniture you can buy. In every other way it is simpler than people expect. There is no demolition, no weeks of mess, and most home murals are on the wall in an afternoon. Here is the whole process, the way it actually runs for our customers, so you know what happens at each step.
Step 1: Choose the wall
Pick the wall you look at, not the one behind you. In a living room that is usually the wall facing the sofa. In a bedroom it is the wall behind the headboard, so the mural works like an oversized headboard of art. In a child's room, choose the wall with the fewest doors and closets cutting into it, because a scene reads best unbroken.
Check the surface while you are at it. Murals want smooth, sound paint. Heavy orange-peel texture, flaking paint, and freshly painted walls all cause trouble. Fresh paint needs to cure, generally about three to four weeks, before anything sticks to it properly.
Step 2: Pick the image
Start from what the room is for. Bedrooms suit calmer scenes: forests, soft landscapes, gentle abstracts. Living rooms can carry more energy, like a city skyline or a large-scale floral. Kids' rooms are the one place to let the theme run, keeping in mind that a design a six-year-old loves may not survive to age ten. Nature and space themes tend to age better than licensed-looking characters.
You can choose from our collections or use your own photo. A family photo, a shot from a trip, or artwork you own makes the wall one of a kind. Just send the original file. Images saved from social media are usually too small to print large.
Step 3: Measure carefully
Measure the width and the height in inches, in two places each, because walls are rarely perfectly square. Use the larger of each pair of measurements. Then note anything inside that rectangle: outlets, light switches, vents, windows, doors. We print to the size you give us, and an extra inch of width is cheap insurance compared to a mural that comes up short.
Step 4: Order and check your proof
On the quote page you upload your image, type in those measurements, and see the mural divided into 24-inch panels, which is how it will actually be printed and hung. The last panel shows its true width, since few walls divide evenly by 24.
Before printing, you get a proof showing the image fitted to your wall. Look at it properly: check that nothing important is cropped by a door frame, and that faces or text do not land behind furniture. Approving the proof is much cheaper than reprinting a panel.
Step 5: What arrives
Your mural arrives as a set of numbered panels with a simple layout guide showing which panel goes where. Unroll them and lay them out in order before you start. Check each panel against the guide while the wall is still bare. If anything looks wrong, that is the moment to call us, not halfway through the hang.
Step 6: Prep and install
Wipe the wall down and let it dry. Most homeowners install peel and stick murals themselves with a helper, a step ladder, a level, and a soft cloth or squeegee. Peel and stick goes like this:
- Mark a straight vertical line where the first panel starts.
- Peel back the top strip of backing and set the panel along your line.
- Smooth downward in the centre, then out to the edges, easing out bubbles as you go.
- Butt the next panel edge to edge, matching the image, and repeat.
Traditional paste murals follow the same order, with paste on the wall instead. If your wall is large, your ceilings are high, or you would simply rather watch, our installers cover the GTA and most home walls are done in a few hours.
Step 7: Look after it
Day to day, a mural asks for very little. Dust it with a dry cloth. Marks on vinyl and most peel and stick murals wipe off with a damp cloth and mild soap. Keep harsh cleaners and scrub pads away from it, and keep direct heat from registers off the surface. That is the whole routine.
The hardest part of the entire process is step 2, choosing. Everything after that is measurement, patience, and one free afternoon. When you are ready to see your own wall in panels, the quote page is the place to start.