MURALS
Emilia has cleverly used murals to add interest to the impressive walls of her apartment. Charlo e Packer talks us through how to choose one for your home
Generally de!ned as any painting applied directly to a wall, murals can be traced back to the Stone Age and have increased in scale and sophistication over thousands of years. While mostly associated with grand palaces, stately homes and places of worship, murals became fashionable in the 1980s. Having been cast aside in favour of more understated wall treatments, murals are now enjoying something of a renaissance. ‘Fashion is so cyclical and the 80s are back in a big way in interior design,’ says Lucinda Oakes, a specialist decorative painter and artist. Lucinda mostly works with interior designers at the top end of the market. Prices start at around £10,000, and she works in a number of ways: painting directly onto walls or on wallpaper or canvas.
The choice is usually a ma"er of logistics: a mural has to be painted in situ, whereas panels of paper or canvas can be worked on in her studio. ‘Some of my commissions take !ve or six months and it isn’t practical to be out in Chicago or London for all that time,’ she says. Instead, she visits the client to discuss the project and measure up, and then returns to oversee the installation.
If a hand-painted mural is beyond your budget, large, high-quality photographic reproductions of historic murals and famous works of art are widely available and o#er an a#ordable continuation of the mural tradition. ‘Our murals are digitally printed onto wide panels with an overlap that is trimmed away for a seamless join, creating the illusion of a hand-painted work of art,’ says Alissa Sequeira of Surface View, which has one of the most extensive collections of historic images. ‘Everything is made to order and to exact speci!cation, so we can accommodate awkward walls,’ she says. Prices start from as li"le as £65, but a mural measuring 3,000mm x 2,400mm, which is a fairly standard wall, would start from £460.
Before commi"ing to any form of mural art, it is worth considering how the design will !t with the rest of your furniture and furnishings. Lucinda asks designers and potential clients to gather images from books, magazines and the internet, ‘so we have something visual to refer to when discussing plans,’ she says. Alissa agrees: ‘It can be quite daunting. Really pinpoint which images resonate with you, and ask yourself what you could live with long term.’