Thanks to today’s wide-format printing equipment and substrates, output providers are not limited to banners, posters, or other “standalone” print products. Graphics can be applied to virtually any surface, so an entire room—wall, door, floor, ceiling, windows, you name it—can become a blank canvas. For a room that’s a basic cube, that’s six different surfaces to apply graphics to, more if there are windows. It’s all a matter of creativity.

Digital décor has been a growing application for the past several years, and digitally printed murals, wallpaper, and other applications have been taking off. These are not only vinyls and papers, but also textile-based wallcoverings. In corporate and/or public spaces, wayfinding and OSHA compliance signage are important applications. But just in terms of aesthetics, people are realizing that, hey, they have wall space, so why not use it for maximum impact? And the nature of digital graphics is such that they can be replaced fairly readily.

There is one undeniable architectural truism: every building has a floor (one would hope), and if you go to any public location, you’re increasingly likely to see floor graphics, whether they’re for wayfinding, for promotional purposes, or some combination thereof. Floor graphics can be produced using solvent/eco-solvent, UV, latex, or any other contemporary printing process. Floors—or, more generally, the ground—can consist of a wide variety of materials, such as tile, linoleum, concrete, you name it, so the caveat when it comes to floor graphics is to pick a substrate that is compatible with the surface to which it is going to be applied. You certainly don’t want to graphic to fail after a minimal amount of foot traffic, and not just for aesthetic reasons. Poorly applied floor graphics can be a safety hazard.