Canvas Print Glossary (2026): 36 terms explained

Canvas Prints Australia carries somewhere north of 15,000 artworks — Banksy reproductions, licensed Aboriginal prints, Australian landscape photography, classic European masters, and a long tail of contemporary pieces from local artists you’ve probably never heard of (yet). With a catalogue that big, the questions customers ask before checkout follow a pattern: what’s the difference between a gallery wrap and a float frame, will a 600gsm canvas really last forty years, can I get a custom size for an odd wall in a Federation cottage, and why does the same image cost $79 in one size and $340 in another? This glossary answers those questions in the same plain language we’d use over the phone to a customer in Albany or Cairns. Written by the Canvas Prints Australia team — most of our printing runs through the Brisbane fulfilment workshop, with Tom on the bench wrapping frames and Melissa on customer service. If we’ve got something wrong, tell us.

Giclée vs inkjet canvas — when the word matters
What is a fine art print? Compared to canvas and photo
Image resolution for canvas — DPI, PPI, and the upload that comes back blurry
Aspect ratio basics — when your phone photo doesn’t fit
Colour profile basics — sRGB, Adobe RGB, and why your screen lies

1. What is a gallery wrap canvas?

A gallery wrap is the most common canvas style we sell — easily two-thirds of orders. The printed canvas is stretched around a timber frame (usually 38mm deep on our standard sizes, 45mm on the chunky ones) and the image continues over the sides instead of stopping at the front edge. No frame, no glass, no matt board. It hangs straight on the wall with about 30mm of standoff, which looks contemporary and suits about ninety per cent of Australian living rooms built since 1995.

The “wrap” bit refers to what happens to the image at the edges. Three options: full image wrap (your photo bleeds around the sides — risky if there’s important detail near the edge), mirror wrap (we mirror the edge pixels so nothing important gets eaten), and solid colour wrap (black, white, or a tone pulled from the image). For most photography we default to mirror wrap because customers send us beach shots with people in the corner and a full wrap chops off Aunty Pam’s elbow. For Banksy or vector-style art, solid colour wraps tend to look cleaner.

The two genuine downsides: gallery wraps can’t be unframed and reframed later without restretching the canvas (a hassle most picture framers can do for around $80), and very small sizes — under about 30×30cm — look a bit lost on a big wall. For under-30cm pieces, framed paper prints almost always look better.

2. Canvas GSM explained — 280, 380, 410: what we use and why

GSM means grams per square metre. It’s the canvas weight before any ink touches it. The number that matters for buyers is mostly about durability and how the canvas feels in the hand, not how the print looks once it’s on the wall — at standard viewing distance the difference between 320gsm and 410gsm is invisible.

Our standard canvas is 380gsm cotton-poly blend (around 65% poly, 35% cotton). That’s the sweet spot for Australian conditions — enough cotton to take ink properly, enough poly to resist humidity-driven sag in places like Townsville and Darwin. We stock a premium 410gsm 100% cotton for fine-art commissions and a budget 280gsm poly that we only use for very large statement pieces where freight cost matters more than archival quality. If a print shop is quoting 240gsm or 220gsm as their “standard,” that’s the cheap end — it tends to sag within two or three years in humid rooms.

For under-50cm prints, any of the weights look identical once stretched. For pieces over a metre wide, the 380 or 410 is genuinely worth paying for — the canvas tension stays uniform and the corners don’t pillow.

3. Stretcher bars — the boring bit that matters most

The stretcher is the wooden skeleton inside the canvas. Customers almost never ask about it before buying. Then six months later, when their print has bowed in a North Queensland summer, they care a lot. Worth a paragraph or two.

Our stretchers are kiln-dried New Zealand pine. Kiln-drying matters because it pulls the moisture content down to about 8-12%, which means the bar doesn’t keep losing or absorbing moisture once it’s living on your wall. Cheap stretchers — usually radiata pine straight off a sawmill, sometimes the pine you find in big-box hardware stores — sit at 18-22% moisture and warp within a year in a Brisbane summer. You can feel the difference: kiln-dried pine is light, dry, slightly hollow when you tap it.

For canvases over 90cm on any side, we add a centre crossbar. Over 120cm, two crossbars. Without them the long edges bow inward over time and the canvas surface starts looking concave at glancing angles. Some online sellers skip the crossbar to save 80 cents in materials — it’s the single biggest cause of “my expensive canvas looks droopy” emails we receive.

Standard stretcher depth: 19mm for budget, 38mm for our standard gallery wraps, 45mm for the chunky deep-edge look that became fashionable around 2018. The 45mm deep edge looks fantastic for large pieces (anything over 100cm) and slightly oversized on small prints.

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

A triptych is one image split across three canvases that hang side by side. We sell them for landscapes (Sydney Harbour, the Twelve Apostles, the Margaret River coast), abstract pieces where the colour flows panel-to-panel, and personalised photography from customer weddings.

The split isn’t quite as simple as cutting the image into thirds. There’s usually a 5-10cm gap between panels when they’re hung, so the file needs to account for that — what’s at the right edge of panel one is not what’s at the left edge of panel two. We handle that processing on our end, but if you’re sending an artwork to be printed as a triptych, give us the full uncut image and let us do the split.

Three-panel sets work best on walls between 1.6 and 3 metres wide. Smaller and the panels start looking cramped; larger and the gaps start looking like missing teeth. The total combined width should be roughly two-thirds of the wall width — so a 2.4m wall takes a triptych around 1.6m total. Equal panels are the safe choice for first-time buyers; some of our customers go with a wider centre panel (the “altar” composition) which suits dramatic landscapes but doesn’t suit busy abstract pieces.

For hanging mechanics, see entry 23 below.

5. Archival pigment ink — fade resistance in real Australian conditions

Pigment inks use solid colour particles suspended in a carrier liquid. Once they’re on the substrate, the carrier evaporates and the pigment sits on (and slightly inside) the canvas or paper fibre. Dye inks, by contrast, are colour molecules dissolved in liquid — they soak in and bond chemically, which looks fantastic out of the printer but fades dramatically when exposed to UV. The rough difference: a dye-based print on a sunny wall in Brisbane might noticeably fade in 18 months. A pigment print on the same wall, behind UV-protective glass, can last 75-100 years before colour shift becomes visible.

We print with Epson UltraChrome PRO pigment inks across the entire catalogue. The certified fade-resistance ratings (tested by Wilhelm Imaging Research) are 75 years for canvas displayed under glass, 200+ years in dark album storage. Real-world numbers in Australian homes are usually closer to 50-60 years for canvas in a sunlit room — most customers will sell the house or repaint the wall before the print starts looking tired.

The trade-off: pigment ink prints look very slightly less saturated straight off the printer than dye-based ones. The difference is the kind of thing a print specialist notices and a normal human walking through a room never does.

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

For framed paper prints (not canvases), we use three weights. 200gsm matt is our standard for under-A2 prints — it’s a satisfying weight, easy to handle for the framer, doesn’t curl in humidity. 250gsm fine-art rag is what we use for our limited-edition gallery prints — heavier, slightly textured surface, takes ink beautifully. 290gsm baryta is a museum-grade paper for the photographic work where we want the deepest blacks and the longest tonal range.

Anything below 180gsm and the paper feels flimsy — fine for postcards or posters, not for art you’re paying $200 to frame. Anything above 310gsm and you’re paying for thickness you can’t really see once it’s behind glass.

One thing that catches people out: paper weight has nothing to do with how dark or saturated a print looks. That’s the ink, the paper coating, and the colour profile. Customers sometimes ask for the “heaviest paper” thinking it’ll look richer. It just feels nicer when it arrives.

7. UV-resistant inks — why we won’t sell cheap dye-based prints

Australia gets more UV than almost any country on earth. The UV index in Brisbane hits 13 in summer, in Alice Springs it touches 15. A print that lasts 30 years in London or Berlin can fade visibly in 6 months on a north-facing Australian wall using dye-based ink.

Our entire canvas catalogue is printed with pigment inks rated for outdoor or harsh-sunlight conditions. The pigment particles are larger than dye molecules, which means UV photons can’t break the chemical bond the same way. There’s no such thing as a truly UV-proof ink — eventually everything fades — but a quality pigment print on quality canvas will outlast the wall it’s hanging on.

What we won’t do: sell solvent-based or dye-based “value” canvases. A few large online retailers do, and the prints look brilliant for the first year. By year three they’ve shifted noticeably toward red (cyan goes first, then yellow). We’ve stopped quoting against those sellers because the customer almost always comes back to us in 18 months wanting a replacement.

If you want extra UV protection for a print on a sunny wall, see entry 12 on acrylic glazing — non-glare UV-blocking acrylic adds another 40-60% to the print’s expected life.

8. Acid-free paper — what it actually means

“Acid-free” is one of those phrases that sounds like marketing but is actually doing work. Cheap paper is made with chemicals that leave it slightly acidic (a pH around 4-5). Over time that acid breaks down the cellulose fibres — the paper yellows, becomes brittle, and the ink it’s carrying degrades faster. You’ve seen this on old newspaper.

Acid-free paper is buffered to a neutral or slightly alkaline pH (7-9). The fibres stay stable for centuries. All our fine-art prints, mat boards, and backing boards are acid-free — it adds about $4-8 per print to our material cost, which is invisible at retail. We won’t quote on framing with non-acid-free backing because the print starts looking worse in less than a decade.

If you’ve inherited or bought a print framed with cheap card backing, look for yellow staining around the edges and a slight brown tint creeping in from the back. That’s acid migration. A reframe with acid-free materials will stop further damage but won’t reverse what’s there.

9. Limited edition vs open edition — what to ask before buying

Open edition means we print it on demand — could be the first one we’ve ever sold, could be the four thousandth. Limited edition means there’s a stated cap: 50, 100, 250 prints maximum, each numbered and signed by the artist. Once the run sells out, that’s it.

Limited editions have two genuine attractions. First, scarcity-driven appreciation — for established artists, a limited edition can hold value or appreciate over time, especially if numbered low (the 3/100 print sometimes sells for more than 67/100). Second, they’re usually printed on better paper with more careful colour matching, because the artist or studio is more invested in each print being right.

What to ask before paying limited-edition prices: how big is the run, is the artist alive and printing more under a separate edition (some artists run “100 limited editions” multiple times with slightly different paper, which dilutes the scarcity), is there a certificate of authenticity, and what’s the secondary market history for that artist’s work. For most home-décor buyers, open edition prints from a quality printer give the same wall impact at a third of the price. Limited editions are for collectors and gift-givers who care about provenance.

10. Float frames vs gallery wraps — the visual decision

Both are framing approaches to canvas. A gallery wrap (entry 1) has the image wrapped around the sides of the stretcher and hangs straight against the wall. A float frame is a thin timber frame fitted around an already-stretched canvas, with a small gap (usually 5-8mm) between the canvas edge and the inside of the frame — the canvas appears to float inside the frame, hence the name.

Float frames suit traditional interiors, period homes, and customers who want their canvas to read as “art” rather than “modern décor.” They add structural protection to the canvas edges (helpful if the print will move house) and finish off the edges of full-image wraps where the side detail looks awkward. We stock float frames in raw oak, black, white, walnut, and aged gold. The price premium is usually $40-80 over a plain gallery wrap.

Gallery wraps suit contemporary interiors, open-plan living, and most of the photography and abstract work we sell. They’re lighter, cheaper, and the visual impression is more “image” and less “framed object.”

A taste opinion: float frames on bold pop art and Banksy reproductions usually look fussy. Float frames on traditional landscape photography, on the other hand, look fantastic — they signal to the eye that the work is meant to be considered carefully.

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

The matt (sometimes spelled “mat”) is the card border around the print inside the frame. It serves three jobs: visual breathing room, an extension of the artwork’s presence on the wall, and physical separation between the print surface and the glass (which matters because if a print touches glass directly and humidity changes, the print can stick).

Moulding is the timber or composite material the frame itself is made from. Mouldings range from skinny minimalist profiles (8-12mm) to traditional ornate profiles (50mm+). Match the moulding weight to the artwork — a delicate watercolour drowns in a heavy gilt frame, a bold pop art piece looks weak in a skinny 10mm moulding.

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

If you’re talking to a framer and they ask about “rabbet depth,” they need to know how thick the stack of materials inside the frame will be. Glass + matt + print + foam-core backing typically needs 8-10mm of rabbet depth.

12. Acrylic glazing vs glass — the safety argument

Glazing is the transparent layer between the print and the world. Traditionally glass; increasingly acrylic.

Standard glass is cheap, scratch-resistant, and looks crisp. The downsides are weight (a 90×60cm sheet is around 2.5kg, which compounds with a heavy timber frame and starts pulling out cheap wall fixings) and shatter risk. For homes with kids, frames over a metre wide, or any print being shipped interstate, we always recommend acrylic.

Acrylic is half the weight, doesn’t shatter (it cracks rather than fragmenting into shards), and can be specced with UV blocking up to 99%. The downsides: it scratches more easily than glass, builds up a static charge that attracts dust, and the cheap stuff has a slight yellow-green tint that affects how the print’s whites look. Our standard acrylic is optically clear museum-grade with anti-static coating. It costs about $25 more on an A2 print than equivalent glass.

Non-reflective glazing — sometimes called “museum glass” or “anti-glare acrylic” — has a micro-etched surface that diffuses reflections. Brilliant for prints hanging opposite windows, slightly fuzzy under direct viewing. We don’t recommend it for fine-detail photography but it’s the right call for big abstract pieces in north-facing Queensland rooms.

13. Giclée vs inkjet canvas — when the word matters

Giclée (pronounced “zhee-clay”) is a French word a New York print studio coined in 1991 for high-quality inkjet prints. There’s no formal certification, no minimum quality bar that legally separates a giclée from an inkjet — both use inkjet printers. The word means “to spray” and was chosen because “inkjet” sounded too pedestrian.

In practice, most reputable print studios use the word giclée to mean: pigment ink (not dye), on archival substrate, on a wide-format printer (usually 8-12 channel ink heads rather than the 4-channel printers used for office work), with proper colour profiling. Cheap canvas printers calling themselves “giclée” are mostly doing the same job we’d just call canvas printing.

Worth paying extra for if the printer is genuinely using pigment ink and a calibrated colour workflow. Worth ignoring if it’s a marketing label slapped on a $39 canvas. Ask the printer two questions: what ink set are you using, and can you provide a fade-resistance rating. If both answers are concrete, the giclée label is meaningful. If they hedge or change the subject, it’s marketing.

14. What is a fine art print? Compared to canvas and 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 framed conservatively. The intended viewing context is gallery-style — close enough to see the detail, formally presented, often signed.

A photo print is a print on traditional photographic paper (glossy or lustre), usually thinner, designed for album storage or casual framing. Photo prints look brilliant on glossy paper but show fingerprints immediately and tend to be retired into albums.

A canvas print is a canvas substrate stretched over a timber frame, intended to be hung without glass, with a slightly textured surface that suits painterly or photographic work that doesn’t need pin-sharp detail.

The choice for most buyers comes down to room context. Gallery walls full of small pieces look best with fine art prints in matching frames. Big statement pieces over a sofa look best as canvas. Family photos in hallways and home offices suit framed photo prints. We do all three but tend to steer customers toward the format that fits the wall and the room, not the most expensive option.

15. Image resolution for canvas — DPI, PPI, and the upload that comes back blurry

DPI (dots per inch) is a printer measurement — how many ink dots the printer lays down per inch. PPI (pixels per inch) is an image measurement — how many pixels are in each inch of the file. People use them interchangeably; printers care about the difference.

The rule of thumb we give customers: for a sharp canvas print, your file needs to be at least 150 PPI at the print size. So a 90×60cm canvas needs an image about 5300×3500 pixels. Most modern phone cameras (iPhone 12 onward, Samsung Galaxy S20 onward) shoot at 4000×3000 native, which is enough for a 60×45cm canvas at viewing distance but will start looking soft at A1 and up.

What goes wrong: customers upload a 800×600 image saved off Facebook (Facebook strips most of the resolution), or a screenshot from Pinterest (which is typically 600 wide). At canvas sizes those look acceptable on a phone screen and noticeably blurry once printed at 90cm. We always preview before printing and flag low-res uploads. Customers sometimes push back (“but it looks fine on my phone”) — the canvas size is the test, not the phone screen.

If you’re shooting specifically for a canvas, set the phone to its highest resolution and shoot a stop or two underexposed (you can recover shadow detail in editing but not blown highlights). Tripod or steady surface for anything indoors.

16. Aspect ratio basics — when your phone photo doesn’t fit

Aspect ratio is the relationship between width and height. A 4:3 image is square-ish, 3:2 is the classic 35mm proportion, 16:9 is widescreen, 1:1 is perfectly square.

Canvas sizes don’t always match the ratio of the photo. A 90×60cm canvas is 3:2. A 100×100cm is 1:1. A 60×40 inch panorama (152×102cm) is 3:2 but stretched. If your image is 4:3 and you order it on a 3:2 canvas, something has to give — either we crop the image (lose some of the edges) or we add a border (and the border is going to look obvious).

Easiest fix: tell us in the order notes which direction 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.

Better fix: choose a canvas size that matches your image’s native ratio. We can custom-size any canvas in 1cm increments — there’s no rule saying it has to be 60×40 or 90×60. We’ve made canvases at odd sizes like 73×52cm to match a customer’s specific image, and the cost is the same as a stock size with the closest dimensions.

17. Colour profile basics — sRGB, Adobe RGB, and why your screen lies

A colour profile is the rule book a device uses to translate numbers into colours. sRGB is the most common — it’s what almost every phone, laptop screen, and web browser uses. Adobe RGB is a wider gamut (it can represent more saturated greens and blues) and is used in professional photography. ProPhoto RGB is wider still. CMYK is the printing colour space (cyan, magenta, yellow, black ink).

Where this gets buyers in trouble: a photo edited on an iMac with a P3-wide-gamut display in Adobe RGB will look stunning on screen. When that image is converted to CMYK for print, the most saturated greens and blues compress to what the inks can actually reproduce — usually a noticeable shift toward duller, more muted versions. Customers compare the print to the screen and feel something’s gone wrong.

Our advice: edit in sRGB. Or, if you’ve edited in Adobe RGB, soft-proof in your editing software to see how the colours will reproduce in print. The Banksy reds and the deep Aboriginal-art ochres are the colours most likely to shift — both sit at the edge of what print can reproduce.

We do automatic colour profile conversion on every upload, biased toward keeping skin tones natural and shadows separated. If you have specific colour-matching requirements (matching an existing painting in the room, for example), tell us in the order notes and we can do a soft proof before printing.

18. Personalised star maps — coordinates, dates, the romantic engineering

A personalised star map shows the actual position of stars in the sky at a chosen date, time, and location. The most common occasions are wedding nights, engagement nights, the night a child was born, or the date a couple met.

Mechanically: we feed the coordinates (latitude and longitude of the location) and the timestamp into astronomical software, which renders the sky as it appeared from that position at that moment. The output is then styled — black background with white stars and constellation lines is the classic look, navy background with rose-gold stars and a sentimental quote is the more current style, and dozens of variations in between.

What’s worth knowing: the astronomical accuracy is genuine — those are real star positions, not decorative scatter. If a customer was an astronomer with the right software, they could verify it. The constellation lines and zodiac labels are layered on top of the actual data. Cloud cover from the original night is ignored (mercifully, because most romantic memories happen on cloudy nights). Distance is also flattened — Orion’s belt looks the same whether you were in Brisbane or Broome that night, because the stars are far enough away that perspective doesn’t shift visibly.

We print these on canvas, framed paper, or postcard-sized for invitations. Lead time is usually 3-5 business days for the proof and a further 5-7 for printing and dispatch. Customers can choose the moment to a one-minute resolution; for moments that involve a registry birth time, the exact minute on the certificate is the right input.

19. Push-pin map art — board options and pin specs

Push-pin maps are travel-tracker maps where customers add a pin for each place they’ve visited. The format took off around 2015 and has stayed popular for kitchens, home offices, and shared family spaces.

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

Map style options: classic mercator (the world map most people know), continental focus (Australia and Oceania centred, which makes more sense for AU customers tracking domestic travel), antique-style (sepia tones with vintage typography), or political (high-contrast country borders for kids learning geography). We can also custom-print a regional map — a Tasmania-only map for hikers, a NSW map for a national-park enthusiast.

A note on board choice. Cork-backed maps look traditional but the cork degrades over time and pins start falling out after about three years. Foam-core lasts longer and holds the pin more securely. Magnetic-backed maps (steel core with magnetic pins) cost more but let you reposition pins endlessly without leaving holes — worth the extra if pins will move regularly.

20. Soundwave art prints — what gets printed and how

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

Mechanically: the customer uploads an audio file (we accept MP3, WAV, M4A, up to 30 seconds). Software analyses the amplitude across time and renders it as vertical bars — the height of each bar is the volume at that moment. The result is the recognisable “waveform” shape, usually styled as black bars on white or white bars on a coloured background.

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

Some sellers offer a QR code on the print that, when scanned, plays the original audio. We don’t do this — QR codes age out as scanning apps change, and a 5-year-old print with a dead QR code looks dated. The waveform itself is the keepsake.

21. Custom canvas commissions — lead times and the revision process

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

Standard lead time is 7-10 business days from approved proof to dispatch. That breaks down as: 1-2 days for our team to review the image, prepare it for canvas (cropping, colour correction, upscaling if needed, mirror-wrap edges), 1 day to send the digital proof, 1-3 days for customer approval (this is the variable bit), 2 days for actual printing and stretching, 1-2 days for QC and packing. Most orders ship by day 8.

The revision process: we send a flat preview of how the canvas will print, plus a mockup of how it’ll look on a wall. Customers can request changes — colour shift, crop, edge treatment — and we resubmit. For straightforward changes that’s another day; for larger reworks (recolouring an outfit, removing a background figure) it can be 2-3 days. We include one round of major revisions and unlimited minor ones in the standard commission price; substantial reworks beyond that are quoted separately.

Rush jobs (3-5 day turnaround) are possible for an extra $40-90 depending on size. Anything under 3 days we genuinely can’t do reliably — the printing itself is fast, but the QC and the canvas curing time after stretching aren’t compressible.

22. Custom canvas pricing — why one piece is $69 and another $580

The 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 linear perimeter. A 30×45cm canvas might use $4 of canvas and $7 of stretcher. A 150×100cm canvas uses $32 of canvas and $38 of stretcher. That’s an 8× material cost difference for the same printing process.

Edge treatment. Standard gallery wrap is the cheapest. Float frame adds $40-90. Float frame in a premium moulding (oak, walnut, aged gold) adds another $60-120. A museum-grade frame with acid-free matt board, UV acrylic, and a hardwood moulding can add $300+.

Image preparation. Open-edition catalogue prints are already prepped, sized, colour-corrected and queued — printing them is a 20-minute job. A customer commission with a photo that needs upscaling, sky-replacement, background removal, or skin retouching can absorb 2-4 hours of design time. That work shows up in the quoted price.

Run length. Single canvases pay full setup cost on a small base. Batch orders (gallery wall sets, business reception walls) share setup across multiple pieces and per-canvas cost drops.

The $69 canvas is usually a sub-A3 open-edition print on standard gallery wrap. The $580 canvas is usually a metre-wide custom commission with a float-framed walnut surround and original artwork from one of our contracted artists. Both are profitable for us at those prices; the work behind them is genuinely different.

23. How to hang a triptych canvas — spacing, height, alignment

Three canvases hung as one piece. Sounds simple, looks awful when done wrong.

Standard spacing between panels is 5cm for canvas pieces under 60cm wide, 8cm for 60-90cm pieces, and 10cm for anything over 90cm. The instinct is to space wider; resist it. Wide gaps make the eye read three separate pieces rather than one composition. The reference is a museum’s polyptych altar — those panels are sometimes only 2-3cm apart.

Centre height: the middle of the canvas should sit at 150-155cm from the floor (slightly lower than average eye-level, which feels right because most viewing happens from sitting and standing combined). That means a 60cm-tall triptych’s bottom edge sits at 120cm.

Alignment: the easiest method is to measure the total combined width (panel widths plus gaps), mark the wall centre, then work outward in both directions from centre. For tools, a long spirit level across all three panels is the difference between professional and amateur-looking. The centre panel goes up first, then the two outer panels aligned by their top edges.

For triptychs above a sofa, treat the three panels 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, with exceptions

The rule of thumb that almost every interior magazine repeats: the artwork above a sofa should be roughly two-thirds the width of the sofa. So a 2.4m sofa wants a canvas around 1.6m wide. A 1.8m sofa wants around 1.2m.

Where the rule works: standard three-seater sofa, single canvas, contemporary or transitional décor. Where the rule breaks down: deep modular sectionals (the visual sofa width is bigger than the seating width), Chesterfield or other high-backed sofas (the canvas needs to sit higher and look lighter to balance the visual weight), and corner pieces (use a triptych or gallery cluster rather than a single big canvas).

Vertical position: bottom edge of the canvas about 15-20cm above the top of the sofa back. Closer than that and the artwork feels squashed; further away and the eye loses the connection between sofa and art. For sofas pushed against tall walls, the canvas can climb higher; for low walls with cornicing, give the cornice 20cm of breathing room above the canvas top edge.

Multiple smaller pieces over a sofa work, but plan the cluster as one composition with a total width of two-thirds the sofa. A scatter of unrelated small canvases looks busy.

25. Gallery wall layout — grid, salon, eclectic

Three main approaches, each suited to different rooms and customers.

Grid layout. Evenly-sized frames in a regular grid, usually 2×2, 2×3, or 3×3. Equal spacing (usually 5-8cm). Looks formal, intentional, and is the easiest to execute — modern eye reads it as one composition. Suits contemporary interiors, hallways, and offices.

Salon style. Dense cluster of frames of varying sizes packed tightly, taking the entire wall section from skirting board to ceiling line. Named after 19th-century Parisian salon exhibitions. Looks rich, lived-in, intentional only when executed well. Easy to get wrong — the eye needs a hidden geometry holding it together (often a central horizontal line through the largest frames). Suits traditional homes, libraries, dining rooms.

Eclectic. Mixed frames of varying sizes, varied spacing, sometimes with three-dimensional objects (mirrors, sconces, hat collections) interspersed. Looks casual but actually requires the most planning. The trick is balance — heavy frames anchor the bottom and lighter pieces float toward the top. Suits Queenslander verandahs, weatherboard cottages, anywhere the rest of the room is also mixed.

Easy planning tool: trace each frame on butcher’s paper, blu-tack the cutouts to the wall, live with the arrangement for two days. Hammer the nails only once you’ve stopped rearranging.

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

Four common hanging systems, each with strengths.

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

Sawtooth hangers. Small metal strip with serrated teeth, fitted to the centre back of the frame. Hooks over a single nail. Easier than D-rings for small pieces, but the single nail point means the print can slowly rotate on the wall and there’s no lateral stability. Fine for sub-30cm framed prints.

French cleat. Two interlocking angled timber strips — one fixed to the wall, one fitted to the back of the frame. The frame slides down onto the wall cleat and the angles lock together. This is the gold standard for heavy canvases (anything over 10kg) and for hanging things securely on plasterboard. Self-levels, distributes weight across a wider area, almost impossible to dislodge accidentally. We supply French cleats free on canvases over 120cm.

Adhesive strips (Command-style). Foam strips with industrial adhesive that hold up to about 3kg. Useful for rentals (entry 33), useless for anything heavy or for long-term hanging in humid rooms — the adhesive softens and the print drops.

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

27. How to clean a canvas print (please don’t use water)

Canvas prints attract dust, especially if hung in kitchens, near air-conditioning vents, or in homes with pets. They should never be cleaned with water, glass cleaner, or any solvent.

The right tools: a soft natural-bristle paintbrush (a 50mm pure-bristle wash brush is ideal — about $15 from a hardware shop), a microfibre cloth (the soft non-abrasive kind sold for cleaning camera lenses, not the kitchen ones), and a can of compressed air for tight corners. Brush gently across the surface in one direction, following the grain of the canvas. The microfibre cloth handles light marks.

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

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

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

28. Australian humidity protection — Top End, Queensland, coastal homes

Tropical and coastal Australia is hard on canvas. High humidity (consistently above 75%) causes three problems: the canvas absorbs moisture and sags between the stretcher bars, the timber stretcher absorbs moisture and can warp, and salt-laden coastal air accelerates corrosion of mounting hardware.

Our humidity-resistant canvases — the standard 380gsm cotton-poly — are formulated for these conditions. The poly content (about 65%) doesn’t absorb water the way pure cotton does, and the kiln-dried NZ pine stretcher (entry 3) resists moisture far better than budget radiata pine. We also use marine-grade stainless steel staples to attach canvas to stretcher; they don’t rust like the zinc-plated steel staples cheap printers use.

Hanging guidance for high-humidity homes: keep canvases off bathroom and laundry walls where steam is constant. Avoid hanging directly above air conditioners (the cycling temperature and humidity stresses the canvas). South-facing walls are kinder than north-facing in tropical zones because less direct sun heating. Allow 1cm of standoff from the wall (D-rings and picture wire create this naturally) so air can circulate behind the canvas — prints pressed flat against a humid wall develop mould on the back over time.

For Darwin, Cairns, the Pilbara coast, and similar climates, we recommend annual brush-dust cleaning and a visual check for sag at the corners. Anything we’ve supplied that develops sag in the first three years, we replace at cost.

29. How long do canvas prints last in Australian climate?

The honest answer: most of our canvases will outlast the wall they’re hung on, assuming standard indoor conditions. The technical fade-resistance ratings are 75-100 years for canvas under reasonable conditions. Real-world Australian conditions can shorten that depending on three factors.

UV exposure. A canvas on a wall hit by 4+ hours of direct sun daily will fade noticeably in 15-25 years even with quality pigment inks. The same canvas on a wall with no direct sun could look pristine at 60+ years. Most fading shows up first in the cyans (skies dull), then in the reds (warm tones grey out).

Humidity cycles. Canvas that goes through repeated wet-dry humidity swings (90% in summer storms, 40% in dry-season days) physically stresses with each cycle. Stretcher bars can develop micro-warps and the canvas itself loosens. Climates with steady humidity (even high humidity) are kinder than swinging ones.

Temperature. Above about 35°C indoor temperature, ink chemistry starts breaking down faster. Most Australian homes don’t get there often, but garage display walls and uninsulated sheds can.

For Cottesloe, Surfers Paradise, North Bondi — the homes with floor-to-ceiling windows and ocean views — expect 30-50 year practical lifespan on a sunlit wall. For interior walls, hallways, bedrooms with curtains, expect 70-100+ years. Either timeframe is well beyond what most customers plan for.

30. What is a Banksy reproduction print? The 2011 quote, and where we stand

A Banksy reproduction is a print of a Banksy artwork, made without the artist’s involvement. Banksy himself doesn’t sell prints of most of his street works. Original Banksy prints (released through Pictures On Walls between 2003-2017 and Print Editions Ltd since) regularly sell for tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars and are tracked on a serious secondary market.

Reproductions occupy a separate space. They’re not authentic Banksys and don’t pretend to be. They’re decorative prints of well-known Banksy images — Girl with Balloon, Flower Thrower, Bomb Hugger, Pulp Fiction — sold openly as reproductions for $50-$300 depending on size and finish.

The legal position: most well-known Banksy works are technically protected by copyright. Banksy’s anonymous status has historically made enforcement difficult — to sue, he’d need to identify himself. In a 2011 letter to Pest Control (his authentication body), Banksy himself said: “Copyright is for losers.” Whether that constitutes a public-domain release or a personal opinion is a question for copyright lawyers. In 2019, Pest Control did start filing some IP claims, primarily against companies using Banksy images for commercial branding.

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. Each reproduction is sold and described as a reproduction, never as authentic Banksy work. If you want an authentic, the only legitimate path is through Pest Control’s authentication system and the secondary auction market — expect to pay six figures for major works.

31. Aboriginal art prints — licensing, royalties, buying respectfully

Aboriginal art carries cultural significance that extends well beyond aesthetic value. Many designs are tied to Country, family, and Dreaming stories that aren’t the artist’s alone — they’re held in trust. Selling an unauthorised print isn’t 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 art centre (Papunya Tula, Buku-Larrnggay Mulka, Warlukurlangu, and others). Every Aboriginal print in our catalogue carries the artist’s name, language group or community, and a royalty back to the artist or art centre on each sale.

What to look for when buying Aboriginal art prints anywhere: the artist’s name (not just “Aboriginal artist”), the community or art centre, a statement about the story or design (if culturally appropriate to share), and a royalty arrangement. Anonymous “Aboriginal-style” prints without artist attribution are usually unlicensed designs by non-Indigenous illustrators — they’re not Aboriginal art, and the design has likely been taken from a real artwork without permission.

A taste opinion, offered cautiously: dot paintings became the most-reproduced style because they’re visually distinctive, but they originated in the Western Desert and aren’t representative of every Aboriginal art tradition. Bark painting from Arnhem Land, x-ray fish from north Queensland, Yidaki-inspired contemporary work from East Arnhem, and the woodblock-style Tiwi Island designs are all Aboriginal art, and all under-represented in mainstream print catalogues. If you want Aboriginal art that says something specific about Australian regional culture, look beyond the Central Desert dot painting.

32. Choosing canvas vs framed vs paper for a renovation

A renovation is the right moment to think systematically about art across multiple rooms. Three principles we’ve watched work over hundreds of customer projects.

Canvas for statement pieces. One big canvas above the sofa, one above the bed head, perhaps a triptych in the dining area. Canvas has no glass to reflect lights, no frame competing with new joinery, and reads as deliberate. Renovations with brand-new cabinetry and stone benchtops can absorb bold canvas without looking cluttered.

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

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

Budget guidance: in a $40,000 cosmetic renovation, art budgets between $1,500 and $4,000 give the room genuine impact. Lower than $1,500 and the new joinery makes the bare walls look more bare. Higher than $4,000 starts feeling like the client is buying art rather than fitting out a room — which is also legitimate, just a different 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.

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

Rental tenants face the same hanging questions as homeowners with one extra constraint: no damage to the walls. About a third of our orders ship to rental addresses, so we’ve tested most options.

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

3M Picture Hangers (the larger gauge). Up to 3kg for the medium ones, 5kg for the large. Better than the strips for genuinely heavy framed prints because they distribute load across a wider patch.

Drywall anchors removed cleanly. Most rental agreements allow small nail or screw holes that can be filled and painted 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 remove.

Hanging rails. A horizontal timber rail (or a manufactured picture rail in older homes) fixed at one height across the wall, with frames hung from S-hooks on the rail. Single fixing line, infinite layout flexibility, looks intentional. Best for renters in older homes with existing picture rails — many Federation cottages, Queenslanders, and inner-suburb terraces have these from when they were built.

What doesn’t work in rentals: blu-tack (leaves grease marks), masking tape (peels paint when removed), and the cheap “no-damage” hooks sold in $2 shops (the adhesive fails in humid rooms).

34. What size canvas for the dining room?

Dining rooms differ from living rooms in two ways that matter for art sizing: the viewing distance is shorter (you’re seated, the wall is close), and the room 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 art crowds the seated diners; smaller and it looks lost. The bottom edge should sit at about 145-155cm from the floor — slightly higher than living-room art because seated dining eye-level is different from seated sofa eye-level.

For end-walls beyond the head of the table, you can go bigger. A 150-180cm canvas as a focal point at the dining table’s far end pulls the room together. Landscape canvas suits longer rectangular tables; square canvas suits round tables.

For artwork beside a buffet or sideboard, treat the buffet width 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 mirrors directly opposite dining art unless the mirror is small and decorative — large mirrors create a confusing double-image effect that disrupts the meal. Avoid art directly above the table itself (it’s a visual collision with the pendant light and 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.

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

Format. Gallery-wrap canvases over framed-with-glass options. Glass over a kid’s bed is a Worksafe issue waiting to happen — earthquakes, jumping on the bed, doors slamming. Even tempered glass shatters on impact. Canvas is soft. If a parent insists on framed paper for a kid’s room, specify acrylic glazing (entry 12) — half the weight and won’t shatter.

Hardware. French cleat (entry 26) for anything in a kids’ room. The interlocking timber strips genuinely cannot be dislodged by a thrown pillow or a leaning ladder. We supply French cleats free on kids’ room orders if the customer notes it in checkout.

Content. A pragmatic note from watching customer orders for a decade: bold primary-colour cartoon characters get aged out by the kid much faster than nature, animals, space, or world maps. The classic “best gift” we see returning customers buy is a personalised name canvas (kid’s name in a styled font) — it grows from baby’s nursery to teenager’s bedroom without the kid resenting it. Disney character canvases, by contrast, tend to disappear around age 7.

36. Wholesale and interior designer pricing — how it works

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

Trade account. Designers and decorators with an ABN can apply for a trade account, which gives a standing 25% discount across the catalogue, priority production, and direct access to our design team for custom commissions. Application requires the ABN, a sample of recent work or trade references, and a brief about the typical projects you handle.

Volume pricing. Orders over $5,000 in a single PO drop another 10%. Orders over $15,000 are quoted individually — we usually find another 5-10% by sharing setup costs across multiple pieces. Hospitality fit-outs (cafes, restaurants, hotel chains) sometimes do single orders in the $30,000-$80,000 range; those are quoted from scratch with project management included.

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

Sample programme. For designers planning a project, we send up to three sample canvases at cost ($20-40 each depending on size) — they come stretched and ready to hang so the designer can show the client. Sample cost is credited against the final order.

Custom artist sourcing. For projects with specific design briefs, we can source original artwork from our network of contracted Australian and international artists. Fees vary by artist and brief. Some of our long-running hotel 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 intro. We aim to respond within one business day.

Browse the Canvas Prints Australia collection

This glossary supports the full Canvas Prints Australia 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