Style guide · Panoramic wallpapers
Panoramic Wallpaper Style Guide
How to choose, measure and install a panoramic wallcovering — the difference between a mural and a repeating pattern, and what to know before you order.
A panoramic wallpaper is a single, large-scale scene — designed once and printed to fit one wall — rather than a small motif that repeats across a room. Understanding this one distinction is what makes the ordering process straightforward. This guide walks through the vocabulary, the measuring method we use in the showroom, and the material choices that decide whether a panoramic reads as fine art or as a busy backdrop.
Mural vs pattern — the essential distinction
A mural (or panoramic) is a bespoke image sized to your wall: the scene has a foreground, middle and background, and there is no repeat. A pattern is a small motif — florals, geometrics, damasks — that tiles across the full room. Murals suit a single feature wall (behind a headboard, above a dining sideboard, at the end of a hallway). Patterns suit whole rooms, powder rooms, or ceilings. If you want the drama of a landscape or a forest scene, you want a mural. If you want texture across four walls, you want a pattern.
How to measure for a panoramic
Measure the wall width and height in centimetres, floor to ceiling and corner to corner. Add 5 cm to each edge for trim allowance and any wall out-of-plumb. Note doors, windows, radiators and switches with their offsets from the left edge. Send us a photograph of the wall taken square-on with a tape measure visible — we scale the print file to your exact dimensions so seams fall in predictable places and the composition is not cropped through a focal point.
Panels, seams and hanging
Most panoramics ship as 50 cm or 100 cm wide panels that hang side by side. Seams are butted, not overlapped, and disappear when the paste dries. On non-woven substrates the paste goes on the wall (not the paper), which makes installation faster and cleaner. Plan for one installer per two panels for anything over three metres wide — trimming a mis-aligned panoramic is not something to try in the middle of the night.
Substrates that suit large-scale work
Non-woven paper is the default: dimensionally stable, low-VOC, strippable in one piece years later. Type II vinyl (Phillip Jeffries, Arte) suits high-traffic and hospitality. Grasscloth and silk substrates give a hand-crafted texture but read as pattern rather than mural — colour and slub variation is part of the material. For bathrooms and kitchens, ask us for a scrubbable non-woven with a matte laminate; standard murals are not designed for splash zones.
How Empire specifies a panoramic
We start from the wall (not the catalogue). Bring us dimensions, one wide photograph and a note on the mood you want the room to hold. We pull three or four murals from stock — Coordonné, Élitis, Casadeco, Arte and our own commissioned artists — and mail A3 sample panels so you can see scale and colour under your own light. Production is 5–15 business days once the file is approved. We hand-check every print before it leaves Montréal.
Explore the panoramic catalog
Browse the panoramic and mural collections we keep in Montréal — from photographic landscapes to hand-painted botanicals.
Shop panoramic wallpapers →Ready to specify a panoramic for your wall?
Book a free 20-minute consultation. We'll size the mural to your wall and mail A3 sample panels of two or three directions before you commit.
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