Journal
Acrylic, Metal or Canvas: Which Fine Art Print Is Right for Your Room?
Short answer: if you want the photograph to look the way I made it, choose face-mounted acrylic. If the room is dark and you want luminous color at a lower price, choose metal. If the room is bright and you want something soft and glare-free, choose canvas.
Every photograph in the collection is offered in all three. Here is what actually changes between them.
Face-mounted acrylic: the flagship
Acrylic is known for the deepest blacks and the best color rendition of the three. Everything I create is meant to be shown on an acrylic medium.
Each print is made by hand and face-mounted beneath 1/4″ Tru Life anti-reflective acrylic, then set on a 1.3″ Italian ROMA float frame. It is made by the people who originated this print medium in the first place, and it is the highest quality you can get today.
- Color and contrast: the deepest blacks available, and the most accurate color.
- Reflection: the anti-reflective acrylic still reads cleanly on the wall directly opposite a window, which is where most people want to hang a piece and are usually told they cannot.
- Presence: the float frame stands the piece off the wall so it throws a shadow of its own.
- Sizes: from 20 × 30″ up to 40 × 120″, ten feet across.
MetalPrint: light that comes out of the picture
In a MetalPrint the dye is driven directly into aluminum, so the picture lives inside the metal rather than resting on it. It is luminous, waterproof and very nearly impossible to scratch.
Metal is the closest material to acrylic in how it reproduces a photograph. It holds shadow detail well, which is why dark rooms suit it.
Canvas gallery wrap: soft and glare-free
Canvas is a giclée print on archival canvas, stretched by hand over 1.5″ bars. It is matte, warm and glareless from every angle in the room.
The trade-off is color: canvas will always mute the overall colors compared with metal and acrylic. In a very bright room that softness can be exactly what you want.
How to choose
- Look at the light first. Bright rooms want canvas, or the anti-reflective acrylic. Dark rooms are where metal and acrylic finally get to show what they are for.
- Think about how close people will stand. Acrylic rewards being looked at up close; that is where the depth shows.
- See it on your wall before you decide. The On Your Wall tool sets any piece into a real room at true scale, or into a photograph of your own wall.
- Still between two? Write to me at Justin@theartoftravels.net and I am happy to help.
Caring for each finish
Keep any of them out of direct sun; that is the one thing that shortens the life of all three. Acrylic and metal want a dry microfiber cloth and never a solvent. Canvas wants dusting, occasionally, and nothing else.
All three are archival and made to order in the United States, then shipped ready to hang.
