You can cover your walls with almost anything you can imagine: paint, wallpaper, or an uninterrupted tiling of paintings and other decorations. Some spaces even opt for more creative choices, such as duct tape or cloth.
But for those who are aiming for a highly customizable option that stands the test of time and is easy to install, digital wall coverings are hard to beat.
To get the most out of your digitally crafted wall coverings, it is important that you understand what goes into a good printed file.
High-resolution wall coverings will look more professional, crisper, and cleaner than those printed with fewer pixels, and many of the factors that influence the success of digital wall coverings are well within your control.
Here’s what you need to know for your residential or commercial space.
Why Digital Wall Coverings?
Before you commit to a digital wall covering order, you may be wondering if it truly is the best choice. In many cases, few options will come out on top of digital wall coverings, and this comes down to a few of their standout features:
- Durability — While some materials, such as brick, may be more resilient over time, high-quality wall coverings are made with fibers that stand up to both force and scratches. This means fewer replacements over time, and many wall coverings will also resist stains and moisture.
- Detail — Digital wall coverings offer one advantage that essentially no other option does: detail. Even a professional painter might not be able to match the level of minuscule details that it is possible to capture within the digital file printed on a wall covering. Thanks to high-quality, precision printing, digital wall coverings can produce any type of image that you desire, from consistent and elegant font to a lifelike nature-themed background.
- Ease — Some people want to achieve a modern, chic aesthetic using stone and other natural materials, or they may wish that their walls showed off a more hand-crafted touch with textured paint. Wall coverings can mimic these effects without the significantly increased cost of installing expensive natural stone and wood or hiring a painter.
Achieving the Best Results with Digital Wall Coverings
If digital wall coverings are a good choice in your space, it is important that you put effort into preparing the file for printing. Whether you choose an image, pattern, or something else, a few things to keep in mind for the best results are:
Resolution
The resolution of an image describes how many pixels it contains. If pixels are small dots that come together to make an image, then the more dots, the clearer the image.
A picture with a resolution of 100×100 has 100 pixels in each row and 100 pixels in each column. The human eye is very good at blending detail together to create a picture, so the further away the viewer, the lower the resolution can be.
In general, the resolution of an image used for a digital wall covering should be at least 100DPI, or dots per inch. In other words, every inch of the picture should contain at least 100 pixels.
Color Modes
The two main ways that people describe the colors in a picture are RGB (red, green, blue) and CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow, black). RGB is a standard created specifically for screens, which means that if you go only by what the image looks like on a computer, you may find that the printed image does not match the digital colors correctly.
Conversely, CMYK is used in modern printing. If your image is formatted in CMYK, you can expect a printed image that replicates what you see in the file.
Alignment
Most pictures are not large enough to cover an entire wall, and many spaces benefit from a pattern that repeats itself over the space.
However, if you are not careful about where the pattern starts anew, it can lead to an unappealing line or unusual overlap rather than a seamless image. Image editing software can streamline the edges of the design to ensure they meet correctly when the pattern repeats, or it can blend the seams so there is no visible start and end.
File Type
Many types of files can contain the information needed to display an image. However, how they display it, and the amount of information they can contain, differs among file types.
The best file types that can hold a large amount of useful information about the image are TIFF and PDF. Be sure to submit a file that is in one of these formats or ask an expert how to convert your image into a file type that can be used.
Achieve Your Ideal Look with High-Resolution Digital Wall Coverings
If you are considering digital wall coverings for your space, there are a number of steps to take to ensure you achieve the quality you deserve.
The experts at Tree Towns can help you set up your order for maximum success and guide you through the process of realizing your vision, whether or not you have any experience in managing image files.
Contact Tree Towns to get started on an order or ask questions about the benefits of digital wall coverings.