Building Wraps: How To Guide

More and more often agencies, studios, and large corporations are using the skyline to define their product or announce a new release. As billboards become more mainstream and even non-traditional fleet graphics and mobile billboards are being overlooked the bigger fish are turning to the buildings around us to post their bigger than life images.

 

This concept has been in Las Vegas for many years, and has been used throughout LA, NY, and other major metropolitan cities in the US for just as long. A solution that made it’s way from both Asia and Europe to the states due to the lack of advertising space in those regions is now giving birth to the American vision of building wraps and decals.

 

How do they do that?

There are typically two different types of building wrap a banner or a decal.   Banner building wraps have a quick reveal, when printed on a mesh material the image does not completely block the scenery to the occupants inside. But banners will not work in every location, and are for usually temporary campaigns. Decals are usually for longer campaign as they too can be printed on a traditional adhesive vinyl or a perforated vinyl that like mesh does not block the scenery to the tenants or occupants inside the building. Typically you would use this style of wrap for building with a flat even surface like glass, or even painted concrete or brick. The material choice is established and the image is then print out in many panels that are seamed together onsite (for decals) or at the production company (for banners). The items are shipped to the location where a trained installation staff will usually repel or use window washing scaffolding to access the sides of the building for hardware and image installation.

 

How long do they last?
Most banner wraps are only meant to last for 6 months, although with proper maintenance and monitoring you can have a wrap last for many years. The integrity of the mesh and or banner vinyl will begin to deteriorate over time, as the color will also begin to fade, so typically your life for a banner wrap would only be 2 years max before you would notice significant banner failure.

 

Decal wraps, depending on the vinyl type can last up to 5-7 years. Granted the perforated window vinyl that allows tenants to see outwards is only rated to last for about 12 months for building wraps, it can be used for longer periods but dirt and pollution will begin to trap itself inside the tiny holes and begin to hinder the view from inside. If the decal is placed on a concrete or painted solid wall surface, you can have very long life from your wrap. With the proper 3M, Avery, or Oracal vinyls you can from 5-10 years of outdoor use warranted by the manufacturer of the vinyl through the printer.

 

How much do they cost?

Price will vary from vendor to vendor, those who wraps often will be more thurough with their quotations and might seem higher than their competitors, but when you taking into consideration the liabilities involved in a building wrap and suspending a 1000+ lbs banner above pedestrian and auto traffic below (sometime over 300= in the air) cutting corner on pricing is not advisable. Now that having been said, if you really want to get a price from a production company come to them with information like:

 

How long will the wrap be up for

How does it need to be installed (under the cover or darkness in a few hours, is there more time)

Does your client or the corporation own the building or are they leasing, do they need building or tenant permission to complete wrap

Will permits be required, and if so who is responsible for pulling them

Make sure you have images of the building with a description of the surface (concrete, brick, metal, glass, other…)

 

Finally have an idea of how big the graphic will be, most production companies should be comfortable enough to give you a sq/ft price for everything once they have an idea of what the projects entails, but if it is a unique wrap there may be a set price that incudes everything instead of a sq/ft breakdown.

 

Remember that a company that has performed these on a national level and has the equipment in house should be your vendor. They have the relationships with the specialists who install these graphics or have them on staff (which is best), and are comfortable quoting on projects of this scale.