The “wow” effect of the wall mural … it’s much more than wallpaper!

If we look at the technical side, there are several differences between traditional wallpaper and wallpaper murals. Decorators, designers and home design specialists use very often wallpaper murals because they know how they can create a “wow” effect in a room. What interests me particularly is the “exclusive” and “personal” nature of wall murals…

(Melanie Doyon and her family with our “World Map” mural to plan their trip around the world) 
I’ve always been fascinated to discover people’s experiences and see how a wall mural can give life to a room. A small room without windows? A trompe l’oeil mural can make a room look bigger! A boring basement? A texture wall mural (like wood, cement, stone or bricks) or a mural of New York will revive your basement! A dark and boring living room? A forest wall mural will give it light and a calm and peaceful atmosphere! The room of your little one is too simple and “sad”? A colorful and instructive wallpaper mural will stimulate imagination and creativity!

Recently, I was amazed to discover the experience of Mélanie Doyon and her husband Benoit Clement. Melanie has purchased and installed the mural Muralunique.com “World Map” to plan their trip around the world. Mélanie told us: “For a full year, we used our wall mural to learn geography and indicate where we wanted to go. We each had color stickers to choose our favorite destinations.” Last time I heard of them, Melanie, Benoît and their two boys were in Vietnam. 🙂 

A wallpaper mural gives life, freshness and personality to a room … and it is a simple and inexpensive way to spruce up your life and your decor!!!

Marianne Cousineau, your wallpaper mural specialist 🙂

Professional Office Decoration (by Clarisse Camborde, Unik Home Staging)

Here is an article by Ms. Clarisse Camborde (Unik Home Staging). Ms. Camborde used wallpaper murals in some of her decorating projects/Home Staging and she shares here her recommendations for professional office decoration. 

Professional Office Decoration (Clarisse Camborde, Unik Home Staging: www.unikhomestaging.com)

What is the relationship with Home Staging?

As in real estate enhancement, psychology is the starting point in decoration, more so than the client’s personal taste.

We must first answer a few questions to determine the future course of the project:
What company image would the client like to show?
This is THE key question to which we must give a precise answer. What look are you going for: state-of-the-art, conservative, creative, reliable, traditional …Find the best adjectives describing your company’s image so that your decor meets their expectations.

Credit: Unik Home Staging
Mandate: an elegant and modern office

Who is your clientele?
What is their age, their living standards, family situation? The offices of a pediatrician is not decorated in the same fashion as that of a financial advisor.

Credit: corentin-m.com

What are the material needs and constraints?
Do you require some equipment for your profession? Is your clientele mainly children? The elderly, the disabled? All of these constraints are unavoidable and will guide you towards making your decision.

What are the professional’s personal tastes?
Of course, it is important that you feel comfortable in your working environment. Once you have defined your image and clientele, your professional decorator will assist you in integrating your tastes. Thus, you will get an office that will meet your clientele’s expectations, your needs as well as your personality!

What is your budget?
This is a delicate but essential question … The most important thing is to always stay within your budget. Thanks to our Home Staging expertise, we can create beautiful surroundings at a reasonable cost. It is all about creativity and strategy!

The first impression your client gets about your company is your offices. So, you must pay close attention to the image you wish to give.

 A meeting room that reveals an audacious side to the company thanks to a mural.
Credit: Unik Home Staging
 (Muralunique.com)

Unik Home Staging is now pleased to add professional office decoration to its list of services offered. Contact us for further information: Clarisse Camborde, Unik Home Staging, 514-707-2824, www.unikhomestaging.com

A “Chic Chalet” Basement! (by Nancy Cartier, N. Intérieur Home Staging & Relooking)

A basement is often a refuge with many functions, from office to guest room, by way of game room or home theater. This area can easily become a warehouse for our old furniture, seasonal accessories, in short, the stuff we use least often. Once we have decided to give it a particular vocation, it will then become a coveted room in your home. In this case, the clients wanted to have a comfortable, inviting and warm room to watch movies. The starting point of this project was the mural, it gives a lot of charm and depth to the room. Around this featured component, we added elements that bring to mind the countryside, all in a “chic chalet” ambiance! The result is warm and bright for a room with only a small window! Congratulations to the owners who did all of the work themselves 🙂

Here are a few photos of this gorgeous transformation.

The mural welcomes us as soon as we descend into the basement, it is the highlight of the room!

The drop ceiling was covered with wooden boards, this simple procedure clearly shows the room’s limits.

A small console table behind the sofa lets you enjoy a bite to eat!

A decoration plan is a must for a project like this, it is the starting point for the work and purchases to be done.  It will save you throughout your project!

Nancy Cartier
N. Intérieur Home Staging & Relooking
www.n-interieur.ca
514-661-1238

Create a Feature Wall (by Clarisse Camborde, Unik Home Staging)

When decorating a room, always start by deciding what will be the “focal point”. In fact, each setting must have a main point of interest: a painting, a fireplace, furniture, a wall…That is the starting point of any setting. One technique is to create a feature wall: by using color or texture, it becomes the spotlight of the room.

Which wall to choose? This may be a wall facing the entrance of the room or a wall that shows off an architectural feature that you would like to highlight, such as a fireplace, a partition or even a wall that links various open space areas. In the bedroom, we generally choose the one with the headboard. Follow your instincts to decide which one to highlight.

The various techniques:

Paint: choose a contrasting color from the other walls in the room.

Source: journalhabitation.com

Wallpaper: very trendy and offering many possibilities, wallpaper gives a lot of personality and originality to your décor.

Source: designmag.fr

The textured wall: whether it is a brick, wood or stone wall, your wall gives character to your decor.

Source: homedzine.co.za

The 3D wall: another trend, the 3D wall.  It is more than a texture; it adds volume to your decor.

Source: decor-touch.com

The mural: increasingly popular in decorating techniques, it offers many possibilities: landscape, brick, wood or concrete wall aspect, metallic finish, geometric shapes … Let your imagination run wild!  It installs like wallpaper, and lets you create, at a lesser cost, a unique decor.  For example, by using a landscaping image, we can highlight the room’s perspective and increase the sense of space.  We find murals of all kinds of styles and dimensions. Dare to try it! 

Source: muralunique.com

You are now equipped with the tools to create your feature wall. Get to work! Clarisse Camborde, www.unikhomestaging.com (514)707-2824

Can any image be made into a beautiful wall mural?

Certain wall mural companies will offer you a choice from a bank of pre-selected images and some will offer you a choice of thousands of images which originate from web-sites such as shutterstock.com and istock.com. Is there an advantage to be able to choose from thousands of images? What are the advantages/disadvantages between the 2 options? Obviously, the advantage to able to choose from thousands of images is having the variety in selection, style, theme and color. However, in order to select an image that will make a good wall mural, I will explain certain criteria that should be followed.

1-The most important: the quality of the image. Generally, it is possible to produce a good wall mural from a 20 mega-pixel image. In certain cases, such as images of forests, a good wall mural can be produced from a 10 megapixel image. It is important to remember that a JPEG image has been compressed to such a degree that there is less detail in both the image and the color. An Image in TIFF format will give you better results. Another fact to consider is that many wall mural companies artificially enhance the number of pixels in an image without improving the quality of the image. It is important to not only check the pixels, but also the megabytes. For example, a 25 megapixel image (5000×5000) should be around 25 megabytes. If the image is only 5 megabytes, the image has been artificially altered.

2-The Seams: The seams will be more visible if the background is a uniform color (a blue sky with no clouds). In images with texture, such as forests, the seams will be less visible.

3-Consider the scale: When viewing an image on your computer (example: an image of 15cm x10cm or 6’’ by 4’’ ), you must take into account that one centimeter on the image will be magnified 24 times on a 2.44m (8 ‘) wall. Therefore, if you have an image with a close-up of an animal`s head and the animal’s nose is 2 cm on the screen of your computer; it will have a dimension of 48cm on the wall.

There are other factors to consider (a very dark image will make the room seem smaller, some details in the original image such as rain/dew drops might appear as blobs once they are blown up into a wall mural size). The purpose of this article is not to produce a comprehensive list of things to consider when choosing an image but to demonstrate that it is not so easy to choose a good one for your wall mural. If you have any questions about an image or questions about this article, please contact us. 

Muralunique.com

Wallpaper Trends 2014

People often ask us what are the latest trends in wallpaper. It is easy for us to have the “pulse” of the market as we are in continual contact with our customers, designers and the leaders in home design.  Although classic images such as landscapes or city scenes are among the most popular, people are now very interested in “textures,” such as brick, wood, concrete, stone, etc…

With current technology, we can print wallpaper murals of absolutely extraordinary resolution (400-to-over-600 megapixels). To achieve this resolution, an image has to be photographed numerous times (20-to-140, 36-megapixels images), in a grid pattern and then stitched together to form a complete image.

Here is an example of a mural with a resolution of 430 megapixels, our wall mural “Something Concrete” (photography by Donn Petelka). Donn Petelka is our photographer specializing in very high resolution images and textures. His images are of such quality resolution that the mural looks “real”. If you saw us at the SIDIM (Montreal International Design Show) or at the Home Show in Montreal, Quebec City, Ottawa or Toronto (IDS, National Home Show, Green Living Show), you’ve probably seen our wallpaper murals and understand what we mean. To view his images, go to the section “Search by Artist / Donn Petelka” on our website. You can also go to the “Textures” section: www.muralunique.com/textures.

Remember that if you have any questions, you can contact us at any time at the following e-mail: info@muralunique.com or from the contact page of our website.