How it is made
Almost nothing in a dental practice is the right size. Signage is off a shelf, the planters are from a garden centre, and the wall behind reception is the wall the builder left. Everything here starts from the opposite end: the space first, then the piece.
The seven steps
Whether it is one hook or a floor to ceiling wall, these are the seven things that happen, in this order.
Send a picture of the wall and tell us roughly what you want on it. That is genuinely enough to start. Measurements can come later, and usually we take them ourselves.
Back within 48 hours. The price is the price. It does not move because the print took longer than expected, and there is no hourly rate hiding behind it.
For anything fitted we come and measure. Walls in older buildings are rarely flat and rarely square, and it is far cheaper to find that out before a panel is printed.
Not a screen mock up. A physical piece, printed in the actual filament, posted to you. Screens lie about colour and a practice is going to live with this for years.
Nothing is printed and nothing is invoiced until you have said yes to the design, the dimensions and the colour in your hand.
Printed on our own machines in Kent. Nothing is sent out, so a change on Tuesday is reprinted on Tuesday rather than queued behind somebody else’s order.
Fitted by our own team across the South East, usually in an afternoon and usually outside surgery hours. Beyond the South East we ship with a fitting guide and templates.
Colour is where this sort of work usually goes wrong. A navy that looked right on a monitor arrives as a purple, and by then it is a wall's worth of panels. So we do it the other way round. You choose from the 101 colours we hold, or give us a brand colour to match, and we print a physical sample and post it to you. You hold it up against the wall, in the light that room actually has, and only then do we print the job.
Most pieces are printed in a matte, through coloured material. The colour goes all the way through, so a scuff on a corridor panel does not show a different colour underneath, and there is no paint layer to chip. Where a piece sits near a lamp we print it in something that will take the heat, and where it needs to be wiped down daily we print it in something that will take that too. Wood filled and metal filled filaments are available where the finish matters more than the price.
It is not vacuum formed, it is not CNC routed acrylic, and it is not a vinyl graphic. Those are all good processes and for a flat two colour logo a vinyl is often the right answer. This is for the pieces that have depth, that need to be a specific size, or that do not exist yet.
Wall pieces go up on adhesive pads or on a hidden batten, depending on the wall and the weight. Hooks and small pieces are adhesive only, which matters in a rented building where drilling into tile is a conversation with the landlord. Anything electrical is installed by a qualified electrician; we make the piece and the fitting, not the circuit.
Installation by our own team covers the South East of England. Elsewhere we ship, with a template and a fitting guide, and most of it goes up with a spirit level and an afternoon.
Everything is made on our own machines. That is not a romantic detail, it is the reason the lead times are what they are and the reason a change is cheap. There is no third party print farm between a decision and a printed part.
Start
A design and a fixed price within 48 hours. Nothing is made and nothing is invoiced until you have approved it, including the colour, which we post to you as a printed sample.
