Canvas Prints: A Buying Guide

A canvas print at Madtag is a photograph or artwork printed onto woven canvas and stretched over a wooden frame 40 mm deep, ready to hang with no glass, no mount and no outer moulding. It is sized to the work's own proportions rather than a fixed panel, the four edges are wrapped in solid black on every piece we make, and it ships free everywhere we sell. Canvas is one of four ways to hang a Madtag print, alongside paper, framed paper and metal.

What it actually is

The face is a woven canvas carrying an ink-receptive coating, printed on a wide-format press and then stretched over an FSC-certified wood frame 40 mm deep and tacked at the back. Nothing sits in front of the picture. There is no mount board, no outer frame and no glazing, and that absence is most of the appeal: a glazed frame reflects whatever is behind you, so a window or a downlight lands on the work as a bright patch, while canvas has a matte, textured face that scatters light instead of bouncing it back. It is the option that hangs happily on the wall opposite the window. It is also lighter than metal or a glazed frame at the same size, and it goes up on the stretcher frame's own fixing rather than a heavy anchor.

The edges, and why ours are black

The four sides of a stretched canvas are 40 mm of surface the buyer is going to see, and the trade solves them in one of three ways. Image wrap pulls the picture itself around the corner, which quietly crops a couple of centimetres off all four sides of the work. Mirror wrap invents that band instead, flipping the outer edge of the picture outwards, so roughly 40 mm of what ends up on your wall was never made by the artist. White leaves a bright halo around a dark work. We do none of them. Every Madtag canvas ships with its sides wrapped in solid black, on every work and at every size, so the picture stops exactly where the artist stopped it. The trade calls a solid edge a museum wrap. It is a fixed choice here, not an option to pick at checkout.

How it compares to paper, framed and metal

Unframed paper is the other end of the range: a loose sheet on Hahnemühle stock, arriving rolled in a tube, with the framing left entirely to you. Framed paper is a different print again, made and framed as one piece on 200 gsm coated silk in a black, white or natural moulding behind acrylic. Metal is the image sealed under gloss on an aluminium panel, and it holds a deeper black than canvas does, which is worth knowing if the work you want is mostly night sky. Canvas is the one with real depth on the wall, 40 mm of it, with nothing framing the outside, which is why it carries a large empty wall without reading as a poster. All four are set side by side on the materials page, and there is a longer read on the aluminium option in the metal wall art guide.

Size, shipping and returns

Every work is offered at the sizes its own file can support, in the ratio it was made in. We never crop a piece to fit a fixed panel, so the sizes on offer vary work to work and the ones you can order are the ones listed on that work's own page. Shipping is free everywhere we sell: Australia, the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, New Zealand and Singapore, no minimum and no exceptions. If a piece turns up faulty, damaged or wrong, tell us within 30 days and we remake or refund it and you keep the piece. If you simply change your mind, you have 14 days to tell us and 14 more to send it back, unhung and in its original packaging, at your own cost, and we refund it once it arrives.