Canvas Print Glossary (2026): 36 terms explained

We’ve been printing canvas out of our Booragoon studio for the better part of a decade, and the questions we get on the phone and over email haven’t changed much in that time. What’s the right canvas weight for a beach house in North Cottesloe. Will a print survive a sunburnt north-facing wall in Hilton. Can you do something at 1.4 metres for a Subiaco terrace where the standard 1.2 doesn’t quite fit. How does the framing work on a Pilbara landscape print. This page is the long-form answer to those questions and about thirty more. Written by the Canvas Prints Perth team — Dean handles most of the framing, Marnie runs the print floor, and between us we’ve shipped more than 60,000 canvases to homes from Esperance up to Karratha and out to Kalgoorlie. If we’ve explained something poorly, drop us a line and we’ll fix it.

Personalised star maps — the engineering behind the romance
Push-pin map art — boards, pins, and which map suits Perth families
Soundwave art prints — what the waveform looks like
Custom canvas commissions — lead times, revisions, the WA Country surcharge
Custom canvas pricing — the $79 print vs the $620 commission

1. What is a gallery wrap canvas?

The gallery wrap is what most customers picture when they hear “canvas print.” The printed canvas wraps around the sides of a timber stretcher — usually 38mm deep on our standard build, 45mm on the chunky version — and hangs straight on the wall with about 28mm of standoff. No external frame, no glass to clean, no matt board. It suits the open-plan houses you’ll see across Inglewood, Maylands, North Coogee and most newer Perth developments.

There’s a decision to make about what happens at the edges. Three options: image wrap (the photo bleeds around the sides), mirror wrap (we mirror the edge pixels so nothing important gets clipped), and solid colour wrap (black, white, or a tone pulled from the artwork). Image wrap is the most photographic, but it eats whatever is at the corners of your file — we’ve had Cottesloe sunset photos arrive where the lifeguard tower is right at the edge of the frame, and image wrap takes the tower with it. Mirror wrap is what we default to for photography unless the customer tells us otherwise. Solid colour wrap is the right call for stylised illustration work like Banksy reproductions.

What the gallery wrap doesn’t do well: it’s awkward to retrofit a frame later (a Perth picture-framer can restretch the canvas and add a frame for around $90-130), and under about 30×30cm a gallery-wrap canvas looks slight on a large wall — for small pieces, a framed paper print almost always reads better.

2. Canvas GSM explained — 280, 380, 410: what we stock

GSM is grams per square metre — the weight of the bare canvas before any ink hits it. The number is mostly about how the canvas feels in the hand and how well it survives twenty years on a wall. Once you’re standing in the lounge looking at the print, you can’t see the difference between 320 and 410 GSM.

We run three canvas weights through the Booragoon studio. Our standard is a 380gsm cotton-poly blend — roughly 65% polyester, 35% cotton. The poly content matters in WA because pure cotton swells and contracts with humidity changes; the poly stabilises it. We stock 410gsm 100% cotton for fine-art commissions where the texture is part of the artwork — usually landscape painters reproducing Margaret River or Pilbara work. We also keep 280gsm poly for very large statement pieces, the 1.8m and 2.4m wide jobs where freight and weight start mattering.

If you’re comparing quotes and another shop is advertising a 220gsm or 240gsm canvas as their standard, that’s the low end. It looks fine on day one and tends to soften in the corners within two or three Perth summers.

3. Stretcher bars — pine, kiln-drying, and why we don’t use radiata

The stretcher is the wooden frame the canvas is pulled tight over. Customers almost never ask about it before buying. Three years later, when the canvas in their lounge room has started to look uneven, the stretcher is the reason.

We use kiln-dried New Zealand pine across the entire catalogue. The kiln-drying step pulls the moisture content down to around 8-10%, which is roughly where it stays in a Perth-conditioned home. Untreated radiata pine — the stuff you’ll find at most hardware shops — sits at 18-22% when sold and never really stabilises. In a Perth summer with the air-con off all day while the family’s at the beach, the bar absorbs moisture, swells, and twists. Three months later in a cool air-conditioned winter it shrinks back. Two or three cycles of that and the canvas surface is no longer flat.

Anything over 90cm in either dimension gets a crossbar. Over 120cm, two crossbars. Without them the long sides bow inward over a couple of years and the canvas develops a slight concave look — most visible when sunlight hits it from an angle, which in a north-facing Perth living room means most afternoons.

Standard depth: 19mm for budget pieces, 38mm for our standard gallery wraps, 45mm for the deep-edge style that’s been the design-trade favourite since around 2018. The 45mm depth suits pieces over a metre wide; on small canvases it looks like the frame is trying too hard.

4. What is a triptych canvas? Three-panel sets

A triptych is one image split across three canvases hung side by side. It’s the format we recommend for wide landscape work — Cottesloe Beach at sunset across the full length of the bay, the Margaret River vineyards in autumn, a Karijini gorge panorama. Also the right call for big abstract pieces in living rooms over 4 metres wide.

The split is more involved than cutting the image into thirds. There’s a gap of 5-10cm between hung panels, so what’s at the right edge of panel one is actually what was a few centimetres into the file before the gap. We handle that calculation on our end — if you’re sending us a panorama to be printed as a triptych, send the full uncut image and let our pre-press team do the split.

Three-panel sets look best on walls between 1.6 and 3 metres wide. The combined width (panels plus gaps) should be about two-thirds of the wall width. So a 2.7m wall takes a triptych roughly 1.8m wide. Equal panels are the safe default — same height, same width — and read as one piece. Some customers ask about asymmetric splits with a wider centre panel; we can do it but it suits dramatic landscapes more than busy abstract work.

For hanging guidance, see entry 23.

5. Archival pigment ink — fade resistance in WA conditions

Pigment inks use solid colour particles carried in a liquid base. Once the print is laid down, the carrier evaporates and the pigment sits on top of the canvas fibres. Dye inks work differently — the colour is dissolved in the carrier and soaks into the substrate, which produces beautiful saturated prints out of the printer but fades dramatically under UV. The practical difference: a dye-based print on a sunny Subiaco wall fades visibly in 12-18 months. A pigment print on the same wall under UV-protective glazing can last 70-100 years before colour shift is noticeable.

We print every canvas with Epson UltraChrome PRO pigment inks. The Wilhelm Imaging Research fade-resistance ratings for that ink set are 75 years on canvas displayed indoors with reasonable light protection, and 200+ years in dark album storage. Real-world numbers in WA homes tend toward the lower end of that range because Perth gets more direct UV than the testing labs assume — we’d quote 40-60 years for canvas on a sunlit Perth wall as a conservative estimate.

The trade-off most customers never notice: pigment prints are very slightly less saturated than dye prints out of the printer. A side-by-side comparison at point-blank range would show the difference. On a wall in a lounge room, it doesn’t exist.

6. Paper print weight — 200gsm, 250gsm, 290gsm

For framed paper prints (the work that goes behind glass, not stretched canvas), we keep three weights in regular stock. 200gsm matt is our standard for prints under A2 — substantial enough to feel like art, not so heavy that framing costs go up. 250gsm fine-art cotton rag is what goes into our limited edition gallery work — heavier sheet, slightly textured, takes pigment ink beautifully. 290gsm baryta is reserved for the photographic prints where we’re chasing the deepest possible blacks and the longest tonal range.

Below 180gsm the paper feels flimsy. It’s appropriate for posters and packaging, not for art you’re spending $250 to frame. Above 310gsm and the extra weight is no longer doing anything visible once the print is behind glass.

A point worth flagging: paper weight doesn’t change how saturated or rich a print looks. The richness comes from the ink, the paper’s coating, and the colour calibration. Customers sometimes ask for “the heaviest paper” thinking it’ll look better. It just feels nicer in the hand on the way to the frame.

7. UV-resistant inks — why Perth UV is harder than Sydney UV

Perth has more annual sunlight hours than any capital city in Australia and one of the highest UV indexes in the country — peaking around 14-15 in midsummer compared to 13 in Sydney. UV is what fades prints. A canvas that lasts 30 years in Melbourne can show fade in 15-18 months on a north-facing Bicton wall using cheap dye-based ink.

Our entire catalogue runs on pigment inks rated for high-UV conditions. The pigment particles are physically larger than dye molecules, which means a UV photon hitting one breaks chemical bonds less efficiently. There’s no genuinely UV-proof ink — every colour fades eventually — but a quality pigment print on quality canvas will outlast the wall it’s hanging on by a comfortable margin.

What we won’t supply: solvent-based or dye-based “value” canvas. A handful of high-volume online sellers offer these for $39 or $49 a print, and they look excellent for the first 12 months. Around 18 months in, the cyan starts to dull, then the magenta. By two and a half years the print has shifted noticeably warm and reds are turning brick. We stopped quoting against these sellers because customers reliably come back to us with a fade complaint.

For prints destined for sunlit walls — anything in a north-facing room, anything in an open-plan living area with floor-to-ceiling windows facing the ocean — we recommend acrylic glazing with UV protection (entry 12). Adds about 40% to the print’s practical lifespan in real WA conditions.

8. Acid-free paper — what it means in practice

“Acid-free” is a phrase that sounds like marketing copy. It’s actually doing meaningful work. Standard paper is manufactured with chemicals that leave the sheet mildly acidic, around pH 4.5-5.5. Over time the acid degrades the cellulose fibres — the paper yellows, becomes brittle, and damages whatever ink is sitting on it. The classic visible example is newsprint that’s been left in a sunlit window for a year.

Acid-free paper is buffered to a neutral or slightly alkaline pH (7-9) and stays chemically stable for centuries. Every fine-art print, matt board, and backing board we use is acid-free. The cost premium per print is around $5-9 — it doesn’t show up at retail prices and the customer never notices it, but the long-term consequence is the difference between a print that still looks good in 2080 and one that’s gone yellow by 2040.

If you’ve ever inherited a framed print from a relative and noticed yellow staining around the matt edges, or a slightly tan tint creeping in from the back, that’s acid migration from non-archival materials. A reframe with acid-free matt and backing will arrest further damage but doesn’t reverse what’s already there. Worth doing on anything of family or sentimental value before the migration spreads.

9. Limited edition vs open edition — collector questions

Open edition means we print the work on demand, every time someone orders it, with no quantity limit. Limited edition means a stated production cap — usually 50, 100, or 250 prints — each numbered (1/100, 2/100, etc.) and signed by the artist.

Limited editions have two genuine attractions. First, scarcity sometimes drives appreciation — for established artists with collector followings, a low-numbered limited edition can hold or gain value, particularly in the secondary market through auction houses like Bonhams or Mossgreen. Second, limited editions tend to use better paper and more careful colour matching because the artist or studio has skin in the game per print.

Before paying limited-edition prices, ask: how big is the actual run, is the artist alive and printing more editions under a separate cap (some artists run “100 limited” multiple times with minor variations, which dilutes the scarcity), is there a numbered certificate of authenticity, and what’s the secondary market history. For straightforward home décor, an open-edition print from a quality printer delivers identical wall impact at a third of the price. Limited editions are for collectors and serious gift-givers — not for filling a wall.

A side note on Western Australian artists: the most actively collected WA names in print form right now are Larry Mitchell, Peter Hudson, and several of the Yarliyil Art Centre artists. Where the cultural protocols allow it, their limited editions are genuinely worth seeking out.

10. Float frames vs gallery wraps — when each one wins

Both are framing styles for canvas. Gallery wrap (entry 1) puts the image around the sides of the stretcher and hangs flat on the wall. Float frames are thin timber frames fitted around an already-stretched canvas with a 5-8mm gap between the canvas edge and the inside of the frame — the canvas reads as floating inside the frame.

Float frames suit traditional interiors, character homes (the Federation cottages of Mount Lawley, the 1920s bungalows of South Perth and Floreat), and customers who want their art to read as “framed art” rather than “wall décor.” They also protect the canvas edges, which matters if the print will move house or interstate. We stock float frames in raw oak, painted black, painted white, walnut, and aged gold. Premium is usually $50-100 over a plain gallery wrap.

Gallery wraps suit contemporary interiors, open-plan plans, and most of the catalogue. They’re lighter, cheaper, faster to produce, and the visual impression leads with the image instead of the frame.

A taste opinion offered here at the risk of being wrong: float frames on Banksy reproductions usually look fussy and over-formal. Float frames on photography of the Margaret River coast, on the other hand, look fantastic — the frame tells the viewer’s eye that this is meant to be considered, not just glanced at.

11. Framing terminology — matt, moulding, rabbet, lip, fillet

The matt (sometimes “mat”) is the card border around the print inside a frame. It does three things: gives the artwork visual breathing room, extends the artwork’s presence on the wall, and physically separates the print surface from the glazing so the print can’t stick to glass if humidity shifts.

Moulding is the material the frame itself is made from — timber, composite, or aluminium. Mouldings range from skinny 8-12mm minimalist profiles to traditional ornate profiles 50mm+ wide. Match the moulding weight to the artwork: a delicate watercolour drowns in a heavy gilt frame, a bold pop-art piece looks underdone in a 10mm sliver. We stock about 40 mouldings in the Booragoon studio and can order another 200 within a week.

The rabbet is the L-shaped recess cut into the back of the moulding where the glass, matt, print, and backing all sit. The lip is the front edge of that recess that holds everything in place. The fillet is a small decorative inner frame, usually 5-10mm, that sits between matt and artwork in traditional framing — almost never used in contemporary framing.

If you’re talking to a framer (whether us or anyone else) and they ask about rabbet depth, they need to know the total thickness of the stack — glass plus matt plus print plus foam-core backing. For a typical framed print on 200gsm paper, the stack is around 8-10mm.

12. Acrylic glazing vs glass — the safety call

Glazing is the transparent layer in front of a framed print. Glass is the traditional choice; acrylic is the modern one and the call we’d recommend in most WA situations.

Glass is cheap, scratch-resistant, and visually crisp. The downsides are weight (a 90×60cm sheet runs about 2.5kg, which compounds with a heavy timber frame and starts pulling out wall fixings designed for lighter loads) and the shatter risk. For homes with kids, frames over a metre wide, anything destined for a coastal property where storm shutters might slam, or anything being freighted across the state, we always recommend acrylic.

Acrylic is roughly half the weight of glass, doesn’t shatter (it crazes or cracks rather than fragmenting), and can be specced with UV blocking up to 99%. The downsides: it scratches more easily than glass, holds a static charge that pulls dust toward it, and the cheap supermarket-grade acrylic has a slight yellow-green tint that makes the whites in a print look off. Our standard acrylic is museum-grade, optically clear, anti-static. Costs about $25-40 more than the equivalent glass.

Non-reflective glazing — sometimes called “museum glass” or “anti-glare acrylic” — has a micro-etched surface that diffuses reflections. The right call for prints hanging directly opposite a window (very common in Perth living rooms because of the way the light comes in). Slightly soft at very close range, fine at viewing distance.

13. Giclée vs inkjet canvas — what the word actually means

Giclée (pronounced “zhee-clay”) is a French word coined in a New York print studio in 1991. It means “to spray.” A studio adopted it for high-quality inkjet prints because “inkjet” sounded too pedestrian and the gallery market needed a more impressive label. There’s no formal certification body. Anything sprayed by an inkjet head can technically be called giclée.

In practice, reputable print studios use the word to mean: pigment ink, archival substrate, wide-format printer with 8-12 ink channels (not the 4-channel office printers), proper colour management. Cheap canvas printers calling their work giclée are usually doing the same job as standard canvas printing and trading on the word’s gallery associations.

Worth paying extra for if the printer is using genuine pigment ink and a calibrated workflow. Worth ignoring if it’s a marketing label slapped on a $39 canvas. Two questions that separate real from marketing: what ink set is being used (the answer should be specific — Epson UltraChrome, Canon LUCIA, HP Vivera, similar), and is there a fade-resistance rating (look for a Wilhelm Imaging Research number). If both answers are concrete, the label is meaningful.

14. What is a fine art print? vs canvas, vs photo

A fine art print is a paper-based print on heavy cotton-rag or alpha-cellulose paper, printed with pigment inks, usually unframed or matted into a frame with conservation-grade materials. The intended viewing context is gallery — close inspection, careful presentation, often signed.

A photo print is a print on traditional photographic paper — glossy, lustre, or satin finish — usually a thinner sheet, designed for album storage or casual framing. Photo prints look brilliant on glossy paper but show every fingerprint and tend to end up in albums rather than on walls.

A canvas print is a canvas substrate stretched over a timber frame, hung without glazing, with a slightly textured surface that suits painterly or photographic work where pin-sharp pixel-level detail isn’t the point.

The choice for most buyers comes down to room context. Hallway gallery walls of small framed pieces want fine art prints. Big statement art over a sofa wants canvas. Family photo walls in offices want framed photo prints. We sell all three but tend to nudge customers toward what fits the wall and the room rather than the most expensive option.

15. Image resolution for canvas — DPI, PPI, and the iPhone problem

DPI (dots per inch) is a printer-side measurement — how many ink dots the printer lays down per inch. PPI (pixels per inch) is an image-side measurement — how many pixels per inch of physical size in the file. People use the terms interchangeably; printers care about the distinction.

Our rule of thumb: a sharp canvas print needs at least 150 PPI at the print size. A 90×60cm canvas needs about 5300×3500 pixels. Most modern phones — iPhone 12 onward, Galaxy S20 onward — shoot at around 4000×3000 native, which is enough for a 60×45cm canvas at normal viewing distance and starts looking soft at A1 and bigger.

What goes wrong: customers upload an image saved off Facebook (which strips most of the original resolution down to about 1200 wide), or a screenshot from Pinterest (typically 600 wide). At canvas sizes those look fine on a phone screen and visibly soft once printed at 90cm. Our team previews every order before printing and flags low-res uploads. Sometimes customers push back (“but it looks fine on my phone”) — the actual canvas size is the test, not the screen.

If you’re specifically shooting for a future canvas, set the phone to its highest resolution, shoot slightly underexposed (you can recover shadow detail in editing but not blown-out highlights), and use a tripod or steady surface for anything indoors. For outdoor Perth photography — Cottesloe sunset, Yanchep bushland, Bibbulmun Track scenery — the high midday UV gives you plenty of light to work with at high shutter speeds.

16. Aspect ratio basics — when your image doesn’t fit the frame

Aspect ratio is the relationship between width and height. A 4:3 image is squarish, 3:2 is the classic 35mm proportion, 16:9 is widescreen, 1:1 is square. Phones shoot in different ratios depending on the mode — iPhone main camera is 4:3, “wide” or “portrait” modes vary, and the panorama mode is something like 7:1.

Canvas sizes don’t always match the ratio of the photo. A 90×60cm canvas is 3:2. A 100×100cm is 1:1. If your image is 4:3 and you order it on a 3:2 canvas, something has to give — either crop (lose some of the edges) or add a border (and a border will look obvious unless it’s intentional).

The fix most customers don’t realise we offer: tell us in the order notes which way you’d prefer the crop. For landscape photography we usually crop sky off the top because sky is more replaceable than foreground. For portraits we crop sides. For abstract or pattern work, either direction usually works.

The better fix: choose a canvas size that matches the image’s native ratio. We can custom-size any canvas in 1cm increments — no requirement to pick from stock sizes. We’ve made canvases at 73×52cm to match specific customer images, and the cost is the same as a stock size with the nearest dimensions.

17. Colour profile basics — sRGB, Adobe RGB, screen vs print

A colour profile is the rule book a device uses to interpret numbers as colours. sRGB is the most common — every phone, most laptop screens, every web browser. Adobe RGB is a wider gamut, used by professional photographers, capable of more saturated greens and blues. ProPhoto RGB is wider still. CMYK is the printing colour space (cyan, magenta, yellow, black ink).

Where it gets buyers in trouble: a photo edited on a high-end iMac with a P3-wide-gamut display in Adobe RGB will look stunning on screen. When converted to CMYK for canvas printing, the most saturated greens and blues compress into what the ink can actually produce — usually a noticeable shift toward duller, more muted versions. The customer compares the canvas to the screen and feels something’s gone wrong.

Our pre-press team does automatic colour profile conversion on every upload, biased toward keeping skin tones natural and shadows separated. If you have specific colour-matching needs — matching the canvas to an existing painting in the room, matching a Pilbara red to a specific Pantone reference — flag it in the order notes and we’ll do a soft-proof print before committing the canvas.

The colours most likely to shift on canvas: deep saturated reds (Banksy graphics, Pilbara ochre tones), deep saturated blues (Rottnest Island sky, marine photography), and bright greens (vineyard photography from Margaret River). All sit close to the edge of what canvas can reproduce. Skin tones, neutral landscapes, and abstract pastels reproduce more or less identically across profiles.

18. Personalised star maps — the engineering behind the romance

A personalised star map shows the actual position of stars in the sky from a chosen date, time, and place. The most common occasions are weddings, engagements, the birth of a child, or the date a couple first met. The print becomes a quiet record of a moment.

How it works: we feed coordinates (latitude and longitude of the place) and the timestamp into astronomical software, which renders the night sky as it appeared from that position at that minute. The output is then styled. Classic style is black background with white star points and faint constellation lines. The current popular style is navy or charcoal background with rose-gold or champagne-gold stars and a sentimental line of text. There are about a dozen design templates and we can mix-and-match.

What’s worth knowing: the astronomical data is genuine. If you handed the same coordinates and timestamp to an astronomer with the right software, they’d produce the same arrangement of stars. The constellation lines and zodiac labels are layered on top. Cloud cover from the actual night is ignored (which is fortunate, because most romantic Perth nights are clear anyway). Distance is flattened — Orion’s belt looks the same whether you were in Fremantle or in the Wheatbelt, because the stars are far enough away that perspective doesn’t shift in any visible way.

We print these on canvas, framed paper, or postcard-sized as wedding invitation inserts. Standard lead time is 3-5 business days for the digital proof and another 5-7 for printing and dispatch. For Perth metro orders, that means a wedding-anniversary order placed on the first of the month is on the wall by about the 14th.

19. Push-pin map art — boards, pins, and which map suits Perth families

Push-pin maps are travel-tracker maps where customers add a pin for each place visited. The category became popular around 2015 and stayed popular through the COVID travel restrictions and the subsequent travel rebound — partly because so many Perth families spent 2020-21 exploring the South West, the Pilbara, and the Kimberley instead of going overseas.

Our standard push-pin map is a printed map mounted onto 12mm foam-core, framed with a 30mm timber surround. Foam-core takes a standard map pin and holds it without the pin punching through. We supply 100 colour-coded pins with each map.

For Perth customers, the most-ordered map style is a WA-focused regional map (the state at scale) followed by a Western Australia + Northern Territory map (for the families that drive the Stuart Highway to Darwin and back). Continental and world maps come next. The classic Mercator world map is the international option. For kids learning geography we usually recommend a political map with high-contrast country borders rather than the more decorative antique-style ones.

A note on board choice. signature pin-hold technique maps look traditional but degrades in coastal humidity and pins start dropping out at the 3-year mark. Foam-core lasts longer. Magnetic-backed maps (steel core, magnetic pins) cost more but let you reposition pins endlessly without leaving holes — worth it if the pins will move regularly as travel plans change.

20. Soundwave art prints — what the waveform looks like

A soundwave print shows the waveform of an audio clip as a visual graphic. Common inputs: someone saying “I love you,” a child’s first cry, an excerpt from a wedding speech, the chorus of a favourite song, a meaningful piece of music from a partner’s family.

Mechanically: the customer uploads an audio file (MP3, WAV, or M4A, up to 30 seconds). Audio-analysis software measures the amplitude across time and renders it as vertical bars — the height of each bar is the loudness at that moment. The result is the familiar waveform shape, usually styled as black bars on white, white on black, or coloured bars on a tonal background.

Customers sometimes hope the waveform will look “right” — symmetrical, dramatic, balanced. The honest answer is that the waveform looks like the audio. A whispered “I love you” produces a tiny squiggle in the middle of an otherwise mostly empty canvas. A child’s cry produces a dense block at the start tapering into a long quiet tail. For the best visual results, we suggest clips with consistent volume across the duration — songs work better than speech, sustained notes work better than whispers.

A small design decision worth flagging: some sellers offer a QR code on the print that, when scanned, plays the original audio. We don’t include QR codes. The codes age out as scanning apps change and a 5-year-old QR on a 5-year-old print looks dated. The waveform on its own is the keepsake.

21. Custom canvas commissions — lead times, revisions, the WA Country surcharge

A custom commission is a piece we make to order from a customer’s own image, sketch, or brief — not from the open-edition catalogue.

Standard lead time is 7-10 business days from approved proof to dispatch. The breakdown: 1-2 days for our pre-press team to review and prepare the image (cropping, colour correction, upscaling if needed, edge treatment), 1 day for the digital proof to be sent, 1-3 days for customer approval (the most variable step), 2 days for printing and stretching, 1-2 days for QC and packing. Most orders dispatch by day 8 of the process.

For deliveries to the Perth metro area, we use a local courier with same-day or next-day delivery from dispatch. For WA Country deliveries, we use Australia Post regular freight to the nearest depot, which adds 3-5 business days to Albany, 4-6 to Geraldton, 5-7 to Kalgoorlie, and 7-10 to Broome and Kununurra. There’s no extra charge for Country deliveries within WA — same flat shipping rate as Perth metro on canvas orders.

The revision process: we send a digital flat preview and a wall-mockup of how the piece will look in a representative room. Customers can request changes — colour shift, recrop, edge treatment — and we resubmit. Straightforward changes are another day; larger reworks (background removal, colour-recasting a portrait, adding text) can be 2-3 days. We include one round of major revisions and unlimited minor ones in the standard commission price.

Rush jobs (3-5 day turnaround) are possible for a $50-100 surcharge depending on size. Under 3 days is genuinely not achievable for canvas — the printing is fast, but stretching and a 24-hour cure time on the canvas tension aren’t compressible without quality risk.

22. Custom canvas pricing — the $79 print vs the $620 commission

Four cost drivers, roughly in order of impact:

Size. Material cost scales by area (canvas is sold by the running metre) and frame cost scales by perimeter. A 30×45cm canvas costs about $5 in raw canvas and $7 in stretcher. A 150×100cm canvas uses $34 in canvas and $42 in stretcher. That’s an 8× material cost ratio for the same print process.

Edge treatment. Standard gallery wrap is the cheapest. Float frame adds $50-100. Float frame in a premium moulding (oak, walnut, aged gold) adds another $60-120 on top. A conservation-grade frame with acid-free matt, UV acrylic glazing, and a hardwood moulding can add $350+ to the canvas price for the same image.

Image prep work. Open-edition catalogue prints are pre-sized, pre-colour-corrected, queued and ready — they go through the printer in about 25 minutes of staff time. A custom commission with a photo that needs upscaling, sky replacement, background removal, or portrait retouching can absorb 2-4 hours of design time. That work shows up in the quote.

Run length. Single canvases pay full setup cost on a single piece. Batch orders (a six-piece gallery wall for one customer, twenty pieces for a hotel fit-out) share setup across multiple canvases and the per-piece cost drops.

The $79 canvas is usually a sub-A3 open-edition print on standard gallery wrap. The $620 commission is usually a 110cm-wide custom piece with float-framed walnut surround and four hours of background-extension and colour work to make a holiday snap work as fine art. Both make sense for us at those prices. The work is genuinely different.

23. How to hang a triptych canvas — spacing, height, the eye-level test

Three canvases hung as one composition. The mistake everyone makes is spacing them too far apart.

Our standard gap recommendation: 5cm for canvas pieces under 60cm wide, 8cm for 60-90cm, 10cm for over 90cm. Anything wider than 12cm reads as three separate pieces hanging near each other rather than as one piece. The reference point is a museum’s polyptych altar — those panels are sometimes only 2-3cm apart and read absolutely as one work.

Centre height: the middle of the canvas should sit at about 150-155cm from the floor — slightly below standing eye-level, which feels right because viewing happens from a mixture of standing and sitting in most rooms. A 60cm-tall triptych therefore wants its bottom edge at 120-125cm.

Alignment: measure the total combined width (three panels plus two gaps), mark the wall’s centre, then work outward from centre in both directions. A long spirit level laid across all three panels at the top, before driving the picture hooks, is the difference between professional and amateur-looking. We use a 1.2m spirit level in the studio. For domestic installations, a $25 builder’s level from Bunnings is plenty.

For triptychs above a sofa, treat the three panels plus gaps as one piece and apply the two-thirds rule from entry 24 to the combined width.

24. Canvas size above a sofa — the two-thirds rule

The two-thirds rule: the artwork above a sofa should be about two-thirds the width of the sofa. A 2.4m sofa wants a canvas around 1.6m wide. A 1.8m sofa wants a canvas around 1.2m wide. Almost every interior design magazine repeats this rule, and most of the time it’s correct.

Where the rule works: standard three-seater sofa, single canvas, contemporary or transitional interior. Where the rule breaks down: deep modular sectionals (the visual sofa width is bigger than the apparent seating width), Chesterfield or other high-backed sofas (the back of the sofa is part of the visual weight and the art needs to balance against it), and L-shaped or corner pieces (a triptych or a gallery cluster usually beats a single big canvas).

Vertical position: bottom edge of the canvas 15-20cm above the top of the sofa back. Any closer and the artwork looks squashed against the furniture; any further and the eye loses the connection. For sofas pushed against tall walls with no cornice, the canvas can climb higher. For walls with cornice or ceiling rose, allow 20-30cm of breathing room above the canvas top edge.

Multiple smaller pieces over a sofa are fine, but plan the cluster as one composition with a total width of two-thirds the sofa. A random scatter of unrelated small canvases looks unconsidered, no matter how nice each individual canvas is.

25. Gallery wall layout — grid, salon, eclectic

Three approaches, each suited to different rooms.

Grid layout. Evenly-sized frames in a regular grid, usually 2×2, 2×3, or 3×3. Equal spacing (5-8cm between frames). Reads as formal and intentional, easy to execute, almost impossible to get wrong. Suits contemporary interiors, hallways, home offices. The Mount Hawthorn art-deco apartments and the Como mid-century homes both take grid layouts well.

Salon style. Dense cluster of varied-size frames packed tightly, taking the wall section from skirting to cornice. Named for the Parisian salon exhibitions of the 19th century. Looks lived-in, intentional, and rich — when it’s done well. Easy to get wrong: the eye needs a hidden geometry holding it together, usually a horizontal line through the largest frames. Suits Mount Lawley character homes, South Perth bungalows, libraries and dining rooms.

Eclectic. Varied sizes, varied spacing, sometimes interspersed with three-dimensional objects (mirrors, sconces, hat collections). Looks casual but takes the most planning. The trick is balance — heavier frames anchor the bottom of the composition, lighter pieces float upward. Suits Federation-era homes, beach-shack-style interiors, anywhere the rest of the room is also mixed.

A planning tool that works every time: cut newspaper or butcher’s paper to the size of each frame, blu-tack the cutouts to the wall, live with the arrangement for two days. Hammer nails only once you’ve stopped moving the cutouts.

26. Mounting hardware — D-rings, sawtooth, French cleat

Four common hanging systems.

D-rings. Small D-shaped metal rings screwed into the back of the frame, one each side, with picture wire strung between. The wire hooks over a single nail or picture hook. Standard for framed prints under 8kg. Cheap, reliable, slightly fiddly to level — adjusting the wire tension on one side raises or lowers that side.

Sawtooth hangers. A serrated metal strip fitted to the centre back of a frame. Hooks over a single nail. Easier than D-rings for small pieces, but the single point of contact means the frame can slowly rotate on the wall and there’s no lateral stability. Fine for sub-30cm framed prints, not recommended above that.

French cleat. Two interlocking angled timber strips — one on the wall, one on the back of the frame. The frame slides down onto the wall cleat and the angles lock. Gold standard for heavy canvases (over 10kg) and for hanging anything secure on plasterboard. Self-levels, spreads load across a wider area, almost impossible to dislodge accidentally. We supply French cleats free on canvases over 120cm — they’re our default.

Adhesive strips (Command-style). Foam strips with industrial adhesive, rated to about 3kg. Genuinely useful for rentals (entry 33), useless for anything heavy or for permanent installation in humid coastal homes — the adhesive softens over years and the print eventually drops.

Choose hardware based on weight, wall material, and access — not on what came in the box.

27. How to clean a canvas print — what not to use

Canvas prints attract dust, particularly in kitchens, near air-conditioning vents, and in homes with pets. Cleaning is a careful business — water, glass cleaner, and solvents all do more harm than the dust they’re removing.

The right tools: a soft natural-bristle paintbrush (a 50mm pure-bristle wash brush from a hardware shop, around $15 from Mitre 10 or Bunnings), a soft microfibre cloth (the lens-cleaning kind, not the kitchen abrasive kind), and a can of compressed air for tight stretcher corners. Brush gently across the surface in one direction following the canvas grain. The microfibre handles light marks.

Water makes pigment ink bleed slightly and can dissolve the UV-protective topcoat. Glass cleaner contains ammonia, which degrades both the ink and the coating. Solvents like methylated spirits will lift the print entirely off the canvas.

For stubborn marks — kitchen splatter, a fingerprint from the hanging process — try a slightly damp microfibre cloth (water only, no soap) and dab rather than wipe. If a mark won’t come off this way, live with it. Most marks are only visible at close inspection, and aggressive cleaning is consistently worse than the mark.

Smoke damage and mould are jobs for professional art restoration, not customer cleaning. If a print has been exposed to either, send us a photo and we can quote on restoration or replacement.

28. WA humidity protection — coastal Perth, the South West, the Kimberley

Western Australian climate ranges across more conditions than any other state. Coastal Perth is Mediterranean — dry summer, mild damp winter, salt air year-round. The South West is similar but wetter. The Kimberley and the Pilbara are tropical with extreme humidity in the wet season and dry heat the rest of the year. Each region puts different stress on canvas.

For coastal Perth (anywhere from Yanchep down to Mandurah), the main concern is salt air. Salt accelerates corrosion in mounting hardware and gradually deposits on the print surface. Our canvases use marine-grade stainless steel staples (not zinc-plated) for exactly this reason. Annual brush-dusting handles the salt deposition.

For the South West (Busselton, Margaret River, Albany), the main concern is winter humidity. Storms bring 80%+ humidity for days at a time. The 65/35 poly-cotton blend in our standard canvas resists humidity-driven sag better than pure cotton. Holiday houses left closed up over winter benefit from a dehumidifier on a timer for 2-3 hours daily during storm periods.

For the Kimberley and the Pilbara (Broome, Kununurra, Karratha, Port Hedland), the wet season is the real test — sustained 85%+ humidity for weeks. We strongly recommend acrylic glazing on any framed paper print destined for those regions; the matt board buffers humidity changes and the acrylic blocks direct moisture contact. For gallery-wrap canvas, keep prints off external-facing walls where the wall itself stays damp during the wet, and allow 1cm of standoff so air can circulate behind the canvas.

Anything we supply that develops genuine humidity damage in the first three years — sag beyond minor settling, mould on the back, frame warping — we replace at cost.

29. How long do canvas prints last in a Perth-style climate?

The short answer: most of our canvases will outlast the wall they’re hung on, assuming reasonable indoor conditions. The certified fade-resistance numbers are 75-100 years under standard indoor light. Perth conditions slightly shorten the real-world lifespan because Perth gets more direct UV and more annual sunlight hours than the test conditions assume.

Three factors determine practical lifespan in WA:

UV exposure. A canvas on a wall hit by four-plus hours of direct sun daily fades noticeably in 15-25 years even with our pigment inks. The same canvas on a wall with no direct sun could look pristine at 60+ years. Fade shows up first in the cyan (skies dull), then in the magenta (warm tones lose punch). For sunlit walls, acrylic glazing with UV protection extends practical lifespan by 40-60%.

Salt and humidity cycles. Coastal homes face salt-laden air year-round and storm-driven humidity in winter. Cotton-rich canvases swell and contract more across these cycles than our poly-blend canvas does. Stretcher bars are slightly more vulnerable to corner warping in coastal humidity than in dry climates.

Temperature. Above about 35°C indoor temperature, ink chemistry breaks down faster. Most Perth homes don’t hit that often, but garage display walls, uninsulated rumpus rooms, and any wall in a Tuart-grove home without air-conditioning during summer can get there.

For a north-facing Cottesloe or City Beach lounge room with floor-to-ceiling windows facing the ocean: expect 30-50 year practical lifespan on a sunlit wall. For interior walls, hallways, south-facing bedrooms with curtains: expect 70-100+ years. Either is well beyond what most buyers plan for.

30. What is a Banksy reproduction print? The 2011 question

A Banksy reproduction is a decorative print of a Banksy artwork, made without the artist’s involvement. Banksy himself doesn’t sell prints of most of his street works — his official prints came through Pictures On Walls between 2003 and 2017 and Print Editions Ltd since. Genuine Banksy prints regularly sell at major auction houses for tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars, tracked carefully by collectors.

Reproductions are a separate market. They’re not authentic Banksys and they don’t claim to be. They’re decorative prints of well-known images — Girl with Balloon, Flower Thrower, Bomb Hugger, Pulp Fiction, Choose Your Weapon — sold openly as reproductions for $50-300 depending on size.

The legal position is messier than it looks. Most well-known Banksy works are technically copyright-protected. Banksy’s anonymity has historically made enforcement difficult because, to sue, he’d need to identify himself. In a 2011 letter to Pest Control (his authentication body), the artist himself wrote: “Copyright is for losers.” Whether that constitutes a kind of public-domain release or a personal opinion is a question copyright lawyers still argue about. In 2019 Pest Control did begin filing some IP claims, mostly against companies using Banksy images for commercial branding rather than against decorative print sellers.

Where we stand: we sell Banksy reproductions because customers want them, the market is well-established, and the artist’s documented position has been ambivalent at best. Every reproduction is sold and described as a reproduction, never as authentic Banksy. If you want an authentic piece, the only legitimate route is through Pest Control’s authentication system and the secondary auction market — expect to pay six figures for any of the well-known works.

31. Aboriginal art prints from WA — the licensing and royalty question

Aboriginal art carries cultural significance well beyond its aesthetic value. Many designs are tied to Country, family, and Dreaming stories that aren’t the artist’s alone to dispose of — they’re held in trust and the artist’s right to reproduce them depends on protocols within the community. Selling an unlicensed Aboriginal print is not just a copyright issue; it’s a cultural one.

We work only with artists who have explicitly licensed their work for canvas reproduction, almost always through the Indigenous Art Code framework or directly with an established WA art centre. The art centres we source from include Yarliyil (Halls Creek), Mowanjum (Derby), Warmun (Turkey Creek), Mangkaja (Fitzroy Crossing), and Martumili Artists (Newman). Every Aboriginal print in our catalogue carries the artist’s name, language group, and a royalty paid back to the artist or art centre per sale.

What to look for when buying Aboriginal art prints from any seller: the artist’s name (not just “Aboriginal artist”), the community or art centre, a statement about the story or design where it’s appropriate to share, and a royalty arrangement. Anonymous “Aboriginal-style” prints without artist attribution are almost always unlicensed designs by non-Indigenous illustrators copying from real artworks — they aren’t Aboriginal art, and the original work has often been taken without permission.

A taste opinion, offered cautiously: Central Desert dot painting became the most-reproduced style because it’s visually distinctive and graphically bold, but it’s not representative of every Aboriginal art tradition and isn’t representative of WA in particular. The Kimberley’s ochre-on-board style from Warmun (Rover Thomas, Queenie McKenzie), the Western Desert dot painting from the Pilbara and Spinifex country, the contemporary work from Yarliyil and Martumili — these are the WA art traditions worth seeking out. The Mowanjum Wandjina figures from the Kimberley are particularly tied to specific Country and cultural protocols; we stock them with full licensing where the artists and senior law-holders have approved reproduction, and not otherwise.

32. Choosing canvas vs framed vs paper for a renovation

A renovation is the right moment to plan art across multiple rooms instead of one wall at a time. Three principles from a decade of customer projects.

Canvas for statement pieces. One big canvas above the sofa, one above the bed head, perhaps a triptych along the dining-room feature wall. Canvas has no glass to reflect overhead downlights, no frame competing with new joinery, and reads as deliberate. New West Australian homes with brand-new stone benchtops and freshly-tiled bathrooms can absorb bold canvas pieces without looking busy.

Framed paper for collections. Hallways, staircases, home offices, kids’ rooms — anywhere with multiple smaller pieces. Framed paper works because frames give visual rhythm and prints can be swapped without redoing the wall. Match frames within a wall, vary across walls.

Photo prints for personal walls. Family photos, travel snaps, kids’ artwork. Photo prints in identical thin black frames make personal collections look intentional rather than haphazard.

Budget guidance from observing many WA renovations: in a $50,000 cosmetic renovation, art budgets between $1,500 and $4,500 produce genuine impact. Below $1,500, the new joinery makes bare walls look starker than they did before. Above $4,500, the client is buying art rather than fitting out a room — which is fine, just a separate exercise.

Plan canvas pieces before paint colours. Canvas dominates the wall it’s on; choose paint that complements the canvas, not the other way around. The Booragoon studio runs a complimentary design consult for renovation clients — bring colour samples and a rough floor plan, we’ll talk through sizes and pieces before you commit.

33. Hanging art in rentals — no-damage hardware that works

Roughly a third of our Perth orders ship to rental addresses. Tenants face the same hanging questions as homeowners with one extra constraint: no damage to walls. We’ve tested most options on rental properties around Perth, here’s what genuinely works.

Command strips and hooks (3M). The actual good solution for sub-3kg framed prints and small canvases. The trick most renters miss: clean the wall thoroughly with isopropyl alcohol before sticking the strip, wait the full hour before hanging anything, don’t try to reuse a strip after removal. Used correctly, a Command strip can hold a 2kg canvas for years with zero damage to paint or plasterboard. We supply them free on request with rental-delivery orders.

3M Picture Hangers (the larger gauge). Rated to 3kg for medium and 5kg for large. Better than the strips for framed prints with real weight because they distribute load across a wider patch of wall.

Drywall anchors removed cleanly. Most WA tenancy agreements allow small nail or screw holes that can be filled at end of lease. A 6mm-or-smaller hole takes 30 seconds to patch with a $4 spackle tube from Bunnings. For prints over 5kg, a single small hole with a real picture hook is more secure than four Command strips and easier to fix at lease end.

Picture rails in older homes. Many of Perth’s Federation-era and 1920s-30s homes — the Mount Lawley character homes, the Subiaco bungalows, the older Inglewood streets — have original picture rails fitted at about 2m height around living rooms. These were installed in eras when nailing pictures into plaster walls wasn’t done. S-hooks hang from the rail, picture wire from the S-hook. Infinite layout flexibility, no wall damage. If your rental has a picture rail, use it — it’s a feature, not a leftover.

What doesn’t work: blu-tack (leaves grease marks), masking tape (peels paint on removal), and the cheap “no-damage” hooks sold in $2 shops (adhesive fails in coastal humidity).

34. What size canvas for the dining room?

Dining rooms have different rules than living rooms. The viewing distance is shorter (seated, the wall is closer) and the mood usually wants warmth rather than drama.

For a wall adjacent to a six-person dining table, canvas widths between 80 and 130cm work well. Bigger than that and the artwork crowds seated diners; smaller and it looks lost. The bottom edge should sit at 145-155cm — slightly higher than living-room art because seated dining eye-level is different from sofa-lounging eye-level.

For end-walls beyond the head of the table, you can go larger. A 150-180cm canvas at the dining-table’s far end pulls the room together visually. Landscape orientation suits longer rectangular tables; square format suits round tables. Margaret River vineyard photography, Cottesloe Beach panoramas, and Pilbara landscapes all work as end-wall dining pieces.

For art beside a buffet or sideboard, treat the buffet like a sofa and apply the two-thirds rule from entry 24. A 1.8m buffet wants a 1.2m canvas above it, hung 15-20cm above the buffet’s top surface.

Avoid large mirrors opposite dining art unless the mirror is small and decorative — large mirrors create a confusing double-image effect that pulls focus during the meal. Avoid art directly above the dining table itself (visual collision with the pendant light and the crockery). One strong wall with one strong piece is almost always better than four medium pieces scattered around the room.

35. Best canvas finishes for kids’ rooms

Three constraints in kids’ rooms: durability, safety, and the chance of the wall décor needing to grow with the child over five-to-ten years.

Finish. Matt or low-sheen finish is the right call. Gloss canvases pick up fingerprints and look untidy within a week. Matt canvas with our UV-protective topcoat resists scuffs and can be brush-dusted clean (entry 27 above).

Format. Gallery-wrap canvas over framed-with-glass. Glass over a kid’s bed is a safety issue waiting to happen — doors slamming, pillows thrown, beds jumped on. Even tempered glass shatters under impact. Canvas is soft. If a parent insists on framed paper for a kid’s room, spec acrylic glazing (entry 12) — half the weight and shatter-resistant.

Hardware. French cleat (entry 26) for anything in a kid’s room. The interlocking timber strips genuinely cannot be dislodged by a thrown pillow or a kid leaning a chair against the wall. We supply French cleats free on kids’-room orders when the customer flags it at checkout.

Content. A pragmatic note from watching Perth families’ orders for a decade: bold primary-coloured cartoon characters get aged out by the kid much faster than nature, animals, space, or world maps. The recurring “best buy” we see — same families coming back for more — is a personalised name canvas (the child’s name in a styled font, sometimes with a small graphic) — it carries from baby nursery through to teenager’s bedroom without the kid resenting it. Disney character canvases get retired around age 7. Australian-animal canvases (numbats, quokkas, dugongs — the WA-specific ones) tend to age better than generic kid graphics.

36. Trade and interior designer pricing — Perth designers, hotel groups, stylists

We supply art to Perth-based interior designers, decorators, hotel and restaurant fit-outs, real estate stylists, and corporate offices. The trade structure is straightforward.

Trade account. Designers, decorators, and stylists with an ABN can apply for a trade account. The account gives a standing 25% discount across the catalogue, priority production scheduling, and direct line access to our framing and pre-press teams for custom commissions. Application requires the ABN, a sample of recent work or a couple of trade references, and a brief about typical projects.

Volume pricing. Orders over $5,000 on a single PO drop another 10%. Orders over $15,000 are quoted individually — we usually find a further 5-10% by sharing setup costs across multiple pieces. Hospitality fit-outs (the East Perth boutique hotels, the Northbridge restaurant groups, the Margaret River winery cellar doors) sometimes order in the $30,000-$80,000 range; those are quoted from scratch and project-managed.

Lead times. Trade orders run on a separate production queue. Standard trade lead time is 12-15 business days for orders up to 30 pieces, 20-30 days for larger fit-outs. Rush production is possible with notice — we don’t surprise designers with last-minute fees.

Sample programme. For designers planning a project, we send up to three sample canvases at cost ($25-50 each) — they arrive stretched and ready to hang so the designer can show the client at concept stage. Sample cost is credited against the final order if the project proceeds.

Custom artist sourcing. For projects with specific briefs — a hotel themed around the Pinnacles, a restaurant with a Margaret River wine focus, a corporate office wanting a Pilbara-photography series — we can source original artwork from our network of WA and national artists. Fees vary. Some of our long-running clients commission unique work for each property; the cost is real but the result is genuinely one-of-a-kind.

To open a trade account, email [email protected] with the ABN and a brief introduction. We aim to respond within one business day.

Browse the Canvas Prints Perth collection

This glossary supports the full Canvas Prints Perth catalogue. Browse all canvas prints, or jump straight to Banksy reproductions, licensed Aboriginal art, or personalised pieces. Questions on something we haven’t covered? Email the team and we’ll add it.

On this page

Canvas & substrates

Inks, papers & longevity

Framing & finish

Print types & quality

Personalised & custom

Hanging & rooms

Australian conditions

Cultural & ethical

Practical buyer guides