Harbor Wraps Shares Details of Stair Project, Tips for Application

Harbor Wraps in Plain City, Ohio, offers everything from fleet and commercials graphics to retail and car wraps, plus PPF and graphic design services. Recently, owner Chris Merz completed a couple of stair wrap installations at the Greater Columbus Convention Center in Columbus, Ohio for the GAMA EXPO. He shares the details of the project, and we pick his brain on best practices and cautions for this type of application.

Who installed, designed, and printed the stair wraps?

CM: I installed the stair set, Whitney Pottiger from ID Graphics did the design work and paneling, and Max Hoster at ID did the printing.

What printers and media were used?

CM: Toro flatbed printer with UV ink and 3M material.

How long did the installation take?

CM: The install took around 2.5 hours.

What are some best practices for this type of application?

CM: When it comes to wrapping stair sets, organization is key starting in production. The images are first paneled for each set of 19 stairs with no vertical bleed and around 4″ of horizontal bleed.

Each stair set section will be laid out on the cutting table after it is trimmed to ensure they are in the correct order and labeled from top to bottom with a layout attached to the outside of each package.

After all of the graphics are trimmed, produced, and labeled, I will lay them out again right before I go to install them to ensure each panel is going on the correct stair as per the layout. Once this is verified, I will start from left to right, butting up the left edge to the wall and trimming the right edge. This method is used to ensure the image lines up all the way down the stairs while minimizing the amount of cuts you will need to make.

Do printers need to keep other cautions or considerations in mind?

CM: I would say the only caution would be to make sure when you are printing to have some horizontal bleed since some staircases are not totally square.