Expand Vol. 3 No. 3

Inkjet, Home & Garden

Recent designer showcase homes reveal an emerging and profitable market for wide-format printing as interior designers adopt digital for custom applications.

There's a vast decor market encompassing commercial and residential environmental design at the cusp of tapping into wide-format inkjet printing like never before. Designers delving into digital are leading a new wave of professionals who see the possibilities of inkjet printing for custom interiors of all shapes, sizes, colors, and patterns.

Recent interior design projects printed with the Legend 72HUV hybrid (roll-to-roll and flatbed) UV-curable printer on inkjet-printable wallpaper and privacy window film reveal the vast potential for inkjet printing in this exciting new market.

Decor Market

Museums have long recognized the value of custom digital printing as their particular needs demanded the ability to build and print custom displays for their audiences. Interior designers, architects, and others specifying interior decor and environmental graphics are finally coming around to see the huge benefits of cost-effectively printing custom images for a variety of surface treatments.

"It cuts down on the hunting and searching you have to do to get something just right. You can take a piece or a pattern from any material, digitize it, and turn it into wallpaper, as we did with our designer showcase room," explains Lance Licciardi, Licciardi Design, Sarasota, Fla. "As a designer, I think more about how to take a specific pattern and turn it into wallpaper or some other room treatment. And, having the ability to turn a picture or a digital file into wallpaper or a wall mural opens up totally new and different opportunities for designers."

Licciardi recently designed a room for the Symphony Designer Showcase House in the Lakewood Ranch area of Sarasota benefiting the Florida West Coast Symphony Youth Orchestra Program. Licciardi has been designing a room for the Symphony Designer Showcase for the past ten years.

Each year the designers are given a loose theme from which they derive their concept. This year, Licciardi and the other room designers were given an around-the-world theme with which to work.

Located next door to Licciardi's studio is Art To Walk On, where Licciardi found the perfect centerpiece for the room, an Ushak carpet woven in Turkey in early the 1900s. Licciardi had found his around-the-world connection, but wanted to replicate the pattern and color found in the carpet on the walls of the entry alcove.

Decor Methods

Being recently introduced to the capabilities of a local printer running the Legend 72HUV through Design By Referral, a Sarasota company which matches designers to print shops and other contractors, Licciardi inquired about the possibilities of replicating the carpet on wallpaper.

Once the wheels were in motion, a photograph was taken of the carpet and the digital file brought into Photoshop for touch-up and color work. The file was then processed through the Legend's Onyx RIP system and output on LexJet dreamScape Canvas.

If you're capturing the pattern of one medium and printing to another medium, such as carpet to canvas in this case, there are two ways to ensure color consistency... One is to enlist the services of a fine-art reproduction company, which typically has a studio with properly balanced lighting and the proper camera and scanning equipment to get an exacting match. The other, more labor-intensive method is to do the color correction in Photoshop, making sure to refer to a swatch, the original piece, or matching Pantone colors.

However, there is a third way… One of the big benefits of digital inkjet printing is the ability to browse through a digital library of images, such as stock photography, find a pattern or scene, and replicate it for a custom surface treatment.

South of Sarasota, in Naples, Fla., Pamela Durkin of New Line Design did just that at a similar Designer Showcase home. For Durkin's project room, she combined faux painting and stone work with a custom inkjet print of an outdoor lanai scene, also printed with the Legend 72HUV on LexJet dreamScape Canvas.

"I thought this product would be great for me, because the challenge was to give the space the look of the outdoors when it's actually located on the third floor of a design center. I used the product as a vista to expand the room and to make people feel like they were outside," explains Durkin. "I used a high-res photograph taken from the collateral materials of the company that supplied the furniture. The products in the room were consistent with the products shown in the wallpaper print. I wanted this picture to be as consistent with the space as possible so it would lend to the realism."

Durkin adds that people touring the home are surprised and impressed by the ability to print a custom scene with a technology that is accessible and economical to boot. The possibilities are almost endless, and Durkin says, "I plan to use the product in the future, and I see opportunities with commercial and corporate clients, including an orthopedic surgeon who would like to create a sports theme in his office."