Ken Gemes Interiors creates inviting, timeless interior environments for the discerning home owner, whether that owner is ensconced in the city or wants to revitalize a more pastoral location.
Having recently moved to the firm’s new location in Mount Vernon, N.Y., founder and president Ken Gemes transformed a warehouse space into a showcase of the firm’s design expertise. One of the pivotal components of the new space is a 15-foot-wide by 9 1/2-foot tall conference room wall mural from décor specialist Soicher Marin, based in Sarasota, Fla.
Soicher Marin has developed a line of wall coverings called Wall Couture™ that combines LexJet’s Print-N-Stick Fabric as the base material with designs, patterns, photos, art and graphics from Soicher Marin’s extensive art library, each uniquely selected and custom-printed for the client’s environment.
One of the benefits of Wall Couture/Print-N-Stick is its ease of use: it’s repositionable, removable and re-usable, and much easier to apply than traditional wallpaper or adhesive-backed vinyl. In this case, Soicher Marin printed the photograph, Man Under Water, in eight 28-inch-wide panels and sent the panels to Ken Gemes Interiors.
“Soicher Marin gave us excellent instructions and the mural went up without a hitch,” says Gemes. “The image is a real show-stopper in the conference room, and adds a big wow factor to our space.”
Soicher Marin’s Katie Bellinder says the key to a seamless application is in the overlap. “We print an inch overlap so that when they apply it to the wall, you put the first panel down, then the second one next to it with an inch of overlap, and so forth for each subsequent panel,” she says. “Then, you take a straight edge and cut off the overlaps so that you have perfect seams that don’t show. It’s not like traditional wallpaper, where you almost always have leftover material you won’t use. We print only what they need.”
The mural was printed on Soicher Marin’s HP Latex 260 Printer. Bellinder says the latex inks provide additional durability, and that scuff marks and dirt are easily removed with a Mr. Clean Magic Eraser.
