Custom banners, built like rigging. 13oz scrim vinyl, welded hems, grommets or pole pockets — and artwork sized for how far away it reads. Every decision a banner needs, before anything prints.
If you searched banner printing or custom banners, this page is the whole conversation: the material, the finishing, the size and the file — drawn live while you read.
Every banner is
four decisions.
A material, a finishing, a size and a file. The print itself is the easy part — banner printing is the front end of our large format printing lane, and the same roll feeds all of it.
Product · 13oz scrim vinyl — unrolled, printed, hemmed, grommeted, in that order
The material — 13oz scrim vinyl
The outdoor standard on our large format spec sheet is 13oz scrim vinyl: vinyl faces with a woven polyester scrim running through the middle. The scrim is why a banner is not just a big sticker — it is what stops a small nick at a grommet becoming a long tear by Friday. Whether an indoor job wants the same build or something lighter is a spec we settle on the proof, not a guess you have to make.
The finishing — hems, grommets, pole pockets
A banner that hangs straight for three seasons and one that curls in a month are the same print with different hems — that line is on the large-format page because it is the whole trade in one sentence. The standard outdoor build takes a welded hem: the edge folds back and is fused, so every grommet pulls against a doubled, sealed edge rather than a raw one. The hem folds over your artwork, which is why the free banner templates draw the fold line and tell you to build to the outer edge with no bleed.
Grommets are the metal rings along the hem — the surface above punches them in the order a press does — and they are the right call when the site gives you something to fix to: a fence, a railing, hooks, eye-bolts. Zip ties and bungees through grommets are how most banners in Phoenix actually hang. Pole pockets replace some or all of the grommets with a sewn or welded sleeve at the top, the bottom, or both, so a pole or rope can ride inside the banner instead of tying to its edge. Pockets win when there is nothing at the corners to tie to — banner stands, street poles, a span between posts. The pocket is sized to whatever slides through it, which is a measurement we take off your hardware at proof time rather than a default you have to know.
Where it hangs
decides how it's built.
Same roll, two different jobs. Indoors the enemy is close viewing; outdoors it is sun and wind.
Indoors — close eyes, easy life
A trade-show, lobby or event banner is read from a few feet away, so it wants the sharper end of the resolution range — the prep guide puts 3–6 foot viewing at 100–150 ppi at final size. What it does not need is armour: it hangs out of the sun for days or weeks, so lamination is usually money spent on a problem it will never meet. That is the same lamination logic the large-format page applies to everything — outdoors and floors, yes; a two-week indoor banner, usually not.
Outdoors — sun, then wind
Phoenix is a harsher sun test than most of the country, and an unlaminated print in full southern exposure fades faster than the same print in shade. The second force is wind, and it is a mounting problem before it is a printing problem: a banner fixed only at its four corners becomes a sail, while one tensioned along its edges — more ties, through more grommets — spreads the load the hem was welded to carry.
Wind slits — the half-moon cuts you see in banners on fences — are the folk remedy, and they are a genuine trade-off rather than a free fix. The cuts let some air spill through, and they do it by perforating the print you paid for and giving every gust a starting point to work on. On a well-tensioned banner they are often solving a problem the mounting already solved. Whether your site wants them depends on where it hangs, what it fixes to and how long it stays up — which is a decision we make on the proof, with the site in front of us, not a checkbox to guess at.
Size to the space,
words to the distance.
Measure the mounting points, not the wall. Then let the reading distance set the words.
Product · the fewer the words, the further it reads
Size to the space: a banner is fixed to real things — a fence span, a railing length, the gap between two posts — so measure between the points it will tie to and let the banner land just inside them, with slack for tensioning. Then round to a standard trade cut rather than a custom one; the large-format page lists that as the first way to spend less without printing anything worse, and the templates below are drawn at exactly those cuts.
Words to the distance: a banner across a parking lot is read in the seconds it takes to walk or drive past, which is an argument for one message, set large — not your whole offer. Resolution follows the same logic and it is the most counter-intuitive fact in the trade: requirements go down as size goes up, because viewing distance goes up with it. Outdoor banners want 80–100 ppi at final printed size, and the prep guide has the full distance table. Logos travel best as vector; if yours only exists as a photo or an old card, send it anyway — redrawing artwork is normal shop work.
| Cut | Where it fits | Finishing | Artwork at size | Turnaround |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4 ft × 2 ft | Doorways, booths, railings — banners start here | Welded hem + grommets | 100 ppi · no bleed, build to the edge | Quoted per job |
| 6 ft × 3 ft | Storefronts, fence lines | Welded hem + grommets, or pole pockets | 80 ppi | Quoted per job |
| 8 ft × 2 ft | The long roadside shape | Welded hem + grommets, or pole pockets | 80 ppi | Quoted per job |
| Custom cut | Whatever the span measures | Specced on the proof | 80–100 ppi at final size | Quoted per job |
By the square foot — once the rates are real.
Banner printing is priced the way all large format is: width × height ÷ 144 is the square footage, the material carries a rate per square foot, and finishing is priced separately because a hem costs the same whatever is printed on it. Two useful consequences: halve a dimension and you roughly halve the print, and there is no plate and no minimum run — a single banner is a normal, sanely priced order, not a setup fee with a banner attached.
Banner questions.
The outdoor standard here is 13oz scrim vinyl — vinyl faces with a woven polyester scrim through the core, which is what stops a nick at a grommet becoming a tear. It takes welded hems, grommets and pole pockets, and it is the banner row on our large format spec sheet. Whether an indoor job wants the same build or a lighter one is settled on your proof rather than guessed here.
It depends entirely on what the site offers. Grommets suit anywhere with fixing points at the edges — fences, railings, hooks — with zip ties, rope or bungees through the rings. Pole pockets suit hardware that the banner rides on: banner stands, street poles, a rope span between posts, where a sleeve at the top and bottom does the work instead. Tell us how it mounts and the finishing falls out of that.
Not automatically, and sometimes not at all. Wind slits let some air spill through a banner in gusty spots, but they do it by perforating the print and giving stress a starting point — and on a banner tensioned properly along its edges they are often solving a problem the mounting already solved. It is a site-by-site decision made on the proof, based on where the banner hangs, what it fixes to and how long it stays up.
Outdoor banners want 80–100 ppi at final printed size — lower than you expect, because they are read from distance. Banners take no bleed: they are hemmed rather than trimmed, so you build artwork to the outer edge and the hem folds back over it. Keep type and logos away from the grommet positions, which punch through the print, and supply logos as vector where you can. The free templates draw all of this for you.
It is priced by the square foot — width × height ÷ 144, times a rate for the material, with finishing priced separately. This site deliberately publishes no rates until they are verified, because a printed price is a promise. Upload your artwork or ask for a quote; the number you get back is the real one, not an estimate this page invented.
Large format printing
The whole roll-fed trade — banners are the front end of it.
Yard signs
When the message should stand in the ground instead of hang.
Templates
Banner dielines with the hem fold and grommet centres drawn.
Custom signs
When the message is permanent and wants metal or light.