School murals are transforming learning environments, and for many good reasons, too.

In the entrance lobby, they can create a warm and welcoming atmosphere. They can depict your school’s values and mission, celebrating diversity and inclusion.

Around the school, wall art can turn plain and boring walls into vibrant and inspirational learning aids.

Should your school embed bespoke wall displays as part of its fabric?

The science behind the use of wall murals in schools

There’s a lot of science that backs using wall murals in schools. For example:

• Approximately 65% of the population are visual learners
• Research shows that we process visual information about 60,000 times faster than text
• Dr Lynell Burmark, Ph.D. Associate at the Thornburg Centre for Professional Development visual learning and co-author of ‘Visual Literacy: Learn to See, See to Learn’, says that, “Unless our words, concepts, ideas are hooked onto an image, they will go in one ear, sail through the brain, and go out the other ear.”

In other words, visuals not only help more pupils learn faster, but they also help pupils retain information longer. Here are a few more reasons for making school murals an integral part of your school.

1.    School murals are inspirational

Bespoke wall art engages children’s curiosity. It can make them think about the world around them, demonstrate achievements of people like them through history, and inspire them to learn and develop their knowledge. The key? Logical progression of information, with impactful wording and visuals.

2.    School murals reinforce the curriculum

There are many ways that wall displays can be used in a school to reinforce your curriculum. For example, a timeline can provide a visual depiction of key events and people through a historic depiction of a subject. This supports learning and helps to improve retention of subject knowledge.

3.    School murals can reduce teacher workload and reduce maintenance budgets

Murals that reinforce the curriculum will help to reduce a teacher’s workload, but vibrant, engaging, and unique wall murals also reduce the work teachers need to put into maintaining wall displays. Plus, a bespoke wall mural can reduce painting and decoration needed for your walls – thus reducing your school’s maintenance budget.

4.    School murals stimulate interest

Want to spark discussion, thought, and ambition? Wall art does just that. Like the work of Banksy, your school can stimulate subject interest. It can spark group conversations, and help teachers to focus their pupils’ learning.

5.    School murals create a vibrant and fun atmosphere

Children learn best in stimulating environments. Wall art helps to create a fun and vibrant school. It gives a sense of positivity and turns once dreary areas into colourful, exciting walkthroughs and classrooms.

6.    School murals make your school easier to navigate

What better way to denote where pupils, teachers, and visitors should walk than wall displays? Geography murals lead to the geography department. A history timeline takes you to the history classrooms. A terrific way to help everyone navigate a large school more easily.

School murals: Making your school a better place for learning

School murals bring many learning concepts into education. They make schools more vibrant, help to deliver visual learning experiences, and can be used to inspire pupils in the curriculum. They can reduce workload of teachers, while improving educational outcomes.

School murals are to learning what movies are to reading: it takes days or weeks to read a book and absorb all the information it contains. A movie can deliver this in a couple of hours. And think of people who have watched their favourite movie a thousand times – they can recite the whole script.

To learn how bespoke school murals can help deliver all these benefits, and more, to your school and its pupils, contact us at Design for Education.