Metal Wall Art: A Buying Guide

Metal wall art at Madtag is a photograph or artwork printed directly onto gloss aluminium, sealed under the gloss itself rather than behind a sheet of glass or a frame. It is sized to the work's own proportions rather than a fixed panel, ships free everywhere we sell, and is one of four ways to hang a Madtag print alongside paper, framed paper and canvas.

What it actually is

The panel is a 3 mm aluminium composite: two thin aluminium skins bonded over a solid core. The image is printed straight onto that surface in gloss and sealed beneath it, so there is no mount, no frame and no glazing to catch the room's light and throw it back at you. It hangs slightly proud of the wall on a concealed fixing rather than sitting flush against it. Weight runs from around 700 g at the smallest size we offer to a little over 2.5 kg at the largest, so most sizes go up on a single wall anchor. Colour comes out saturated and the blacks stay dense, which is why the format suits high-contrast photography and deep-sky imagery in particular.

How it compares to paper and canvas

Paper is the other end of the spectrum: a loose sheet on Hahnemühle stock, arrives rolled in a tube, and the framing is entirely up to you. Canvas sits between the two, a woven surface stretched over a wooden frame with the edges wrapped in solid black, built to occupy a room rather than lie flat against a wall. Framed paper is a different print again, made and framed as one piece in black, white or natural moulding. Metal is the option for a picture that should do the talking with nothing else on the wall around it.

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 size, so the sizes on offer vary work to work. 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.