Hand-painted wall advertising

A hand-painted wall advertisement — a wallscape, or a painted billboard — is a campaign laid onto the side of a building in paint, by painters on lifts, instead of printed on vinyl and hung. The artwork is the brand’s; we scale it to the wall and paint every letter, face and product by hand. Gucci in New York, 81 by 80 feet, and Johnnie Walker Blue over a corner in Manhattan are two of ours.

Because the paint is the wall rather than a skin hung on it: the brick and its mortar lines read through the picture, and there is no seam, panel edge or printed sheen. A wall going up by hand is also an event on the street, and the painting itself becomes content: many of the walls on this site were filmed as they went up. And the design is made for that one wall, round its corner as on the Red Bull wall, or down a tall, narrow face like Vitamin Water’s 9 by 20 feet.

Yes. A painted wall is often sold as media by the company that holds it, and we paint for them as well as for brands and their agencies: Rains, in Manhattan, was painted for AMC — Angel Media Co. Whoever the brief comes from, the job is the same: survey the wall, scale the artwork, paint it by hand and coat it.

A campaign wall starts from the campaign’s own image: a small picture that our prep scales and projects onto a massive canvas, gridded out on the wall and painted from a printed reference. If you are starting from an idea rather than finished artwork, tell us what the wall is for at the free consult and we will talk the design through.

Building scale is the everyday job. Crown Royal × Trail Blazers in Portland is 85 feet wide by 90 feet tall, Gucci in New York 81 by 80, and I Am Speaking: John Lewis in Rochester about 3,200 square feet. Our tallest wall is the dolphins in Mazatlán, Sinaloa, and the studio has painted more than 100,000 square feet so far, 25,000 of it in 2026.

It depends on the size of the wall, its surface, how the crew can reach it and the weather. We look at all four before we commit to a date, and the schedule comes with the quote.

Many of our walls are brick — SoHo and lower Manhattan are full of them — and we have painted concrete, as on the Flower City underpass in Rochester. Every wall starts with a survey of the surface, the light and how the paint will weather, and the prep follows from what the survey finds.

Whatever the wall needs to last. There is a science to paint: we analyze the way the paint will decay over time and how the light will affect its colour, so we use only what we need and what will last, and we mix the colour for the wall it is going on.

Preservation is the last of our three stages. When the mural is finished we apply an environmentally friendly coating that makes it easy to clean any future vandalism without damaging the artwork.

We work with the wall owner and with the city’s requirements as part of the project, and we plan the job — lifts, access, the street below — around them. Approval itself is the owner’s and the city’s to give, so tell us in the brief who owns the wall and what you already know, and we will work through it with you.

Yes. We are based in New York and paint nationwide and abroad — in Kenya, Brazil, San Francisco, San Diego, Houston, Los Angeles, New York, Boston, Austin, Chicago, Rochester and Brockport, among others, and in Mazatlán, Sinaloa, Mexico. Where we paint has the walls city by city.

Book a free consult: fill in the brief or email hello@openairgallery.art. Tell us the wall, the city and roughly how big it is — a photo of the wall is enough to start — and we will come back with a plan and a price.

It depends on the size of the wall, the surface, the access and the design, so there is no price list: every wall is quoted after the consult. The brief asks for a budget range, so the plan we come back with fits it.

Yes: hand-lettered signage and painted banners for storefronts and campaigns, done with the same brush as the walls. Every letter on the Fords Gin wall, glass and olives and all, was laid on by hand.