To look professional, you must center the mural vertically in the space, AND center the field tile (the tiles that surround the mural on the rest of the wall) pattern vertically around it based on the mural center. You float the mural horizontally to where it looks best, proportion-wise in the space; this is not always perfectly centered horizontally.

What I did was draw a vertical center line using a laser level and worked out from there both sides. In my case I did not center the mural horizontally because when standing in my kitchen the range hood throws a bit of visual cover over the top of my mural and would have obscured the top edge, so I floated my mural down horizontally a bit to compensate for this. The picture is taken from a squatting height, so doesn't show this effect; it was taken to see the tile install job.

Go to Houzz and search for tile murals and study their installs and how they were done. It's very important to get it right because the eye will see right away if it's wrong.

This is one project where you want to TAKE YOUR TIME and get it right, because if you don't you will SEE it every time and grimace!

Personally, I think murals look much better with some sort of framing surround, too, that borders them into the field tile. Usually to do this you need a wet saw to cut the pieces well for mitered corners, but if you use something like mosaic pieces for the border you might not need to.

Hi beautybutdebtfree: I LOVE your mural. Can you tell me where you got it?
Thanks,
Sea

Hi Sea,

This was made from a custom graphic. The tiles were made by FlekmanArt. They have a presence on ebay as marsal62 also. I actually went through TWO murals, the first was using an Etsy seller whose work was NOT acceptable. There are tons of mural folks and they are not all created equal!!

Flekman had some of the best pricing which was shocking because their quality was far superior. You need someone who can make your mural with accurate color rendering and accurate alignment.

My first vendor tried to send me a mural that the colors were all off and the alignment... wasn't.

So by the time I went to Flekman, I was burned. I asked them to make me test tiles, one a whole mural squished onto one tile so I could see how ALL the colors would render, and one of a full size tile of (for my mural) the critical blue. I was working with a VERY tricky blue that has green and grey undertones (my camera doesn't show this at all in my picture) and I had to get the color rendering accurate or the mural would have RUINED my kitchen.

As to the graphic itself, this was a graphics file made by me from a real 1920s can label. I bought the label from thelabelman.com whom I recommend if you want a vintage graphic.

I'm pretty sure Gina at Flekman can make you a graphic from a label if you need help there, you just mail the label to her and she will work with you to make the graphics file. It's pretty technical to do yourself as you need HIGH RESOLUTION and color accuracy.

In my case, I added stippling, re-arranged some border and accent elements, and packed the graphic with stuff, as I wanted no plain space on a backsplash graphic, so splashes of marinara aren't obvious! This is also why I sized my mural to fill my backsplash area as my field tile would easily show splashes, splops and splurps of sauce, whereas the mural disguises them extremely well.

I'll have to post the pics in multiple posts, so hang on. First is the original label I worked from.

Here is a link that might be useful: FlekmanArt custom murals - HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

This post was edited by beautybutdebtfree on Wed, May 28, 14 at 11:14

Here are the test tiles I had Gina make for me, to be sure of the color rendering. It cost me the price of two printed tiles and shipping and was WELL worth it to check all the colors. The full size mural was perfectly the same colors as the test tiles, so was true.

And for comparison, here is the "product" mural from an etsy seller. Train-wreck. Notice how the border graphic is cut off on the right edge and not centered. Colors are inaccurate and all wrong, with neon purple berries, muddy teal-ish greens not true to the original scan, etc. And slices and chunks of graphics missing throughout on the alignment. And the all important signature blue of my kitchen is closer to royal here, compare to the original graphic and Gina's full size test tile of the deco graphic.

And, because my camera itself is having color rendering accuracy issues, here is a shot showing the mural and original graphic in the same shot, so you can compare the original colors and the tile mural (even though my camera has distorted the colors from real life). You can see that Flekman's tile mural is dead on to the original graphic.

This post was edited by beautybutdebtfree on Wed, May 28, 14 at 11:23