Everyman cinema, Liverpool

In October to December 2018 we installed bespoke digital wallcoverings at the Everyman cinema in Liverpool: extra-wide, large-format prints of classic film and music imagery, printed by Muraspec and hung as single pictures from floor to ceiling.

At a glance

Client: Everyman cinema, Liverpool
Where: Metquarter, Victoria Street, Liverpool
When: October to December 2018
Scope: installation of bespoke large-format digital prints
Wallcovering: Muraspec digital print, extra-wide
Imagery: black-and-white film stills and colour street scenes

The venue

Everyman’s Liverpool cinema at the Metquarter opened on 18 December 2018: four screens in 18,000 sq ft, with a bar, a Spielburger kitchen and food and drink served to the seats (Place North West, 15 November 2018). Our installation ran from October to December 2018, in the weeks before the opening.

A picture, not a pattern

A digital mural is one image cut into drops. If a drop is hung out of order, a few millimetres high, or stretched as it is pasted, a face or a line breaks at the joint and the picture is lost. Each drop is hung in sequence and matched across the joint, from the top of the wall down.

Preparing the walls

A large print shows every bump beneath it, so the walls were prepared and lined before the murals went up, as one of the photographs shows. Scaffold towers and platforms gave a safe working height on the tallest walls.

Photographs on this page

Our own photographs, first posted on our Instagram, @mrwallcover, from October to December 2018: the finished murals first, then installation and preparation. The faces in the murals are printed artworks. The work is recorded in our posts of 24 October 2018 (BpT508uHLMu) and 27 November 2018 (BqsxZT2gAjQ).

The same standards, on every commission.

Whether the client is a hotel group, a designer or a household, the job runs the same way. These are the parts a photograph never shows.

Survey and scope, room by room

We measure the wall that will actually be hung, allow for the repeat and the wastage, and write a scope of works room by room before anyone orders paper.

Preparation decides the finish

Walls are filled, made good and primed until they are true. If a wall is not ready for the material specified, we say so before the last drop is ordered.

Protection and containment

Floors, furniture and finished joinery are protected as part of the hang. Work is contained and the place is left tidy each evening. In a home we are visitors; in a hotel we work around the house.

Batch and shade control

Deliveries are checked against the measure, and batches and shading are managed so that a corridor of rooms reads as one surface.

Set out from the room's focal points

Pattern is set out from chimneypieces, doorcases and bed walls, so the design meets the cornice and the joinery with composure.

One team, then the return visit

The people who start are the people who finish. Four to six weeks after completion we come back to look at every seam and edge, and the workmanship is guaranteed for twelve months.