Graffiti may be considered art to some people, but this is only true when it’s painted on canvases. To be honest, there’s really nothing artistic about defacing public property.
The truth is that graffiti, also known as tagging, is a scourge to many industrial lots, commercial buildings, and other public properties. Some are even more daring, trespassing on private property and tagging residential homes.
Not only is it illegal to tag or mark someone else’s property, but these products are also extremely hard and sometimes impossible for property owners to remove. You can see evidence of this everywhere, one of the most common examples of this being train cars.
Anti-Graffiti Coating for Public Murals and Other Artwork:
In the case of a public mural, such as in a school or even this park, removing graffiti would be an even more difficult task. Unfortunately, many cleaning solutions that remove graffiti paint may also smudge the mural art underneath.
Luckily, there are anti-graffiti paint and coating products to prevent this all together! An anti-graffiti coating is a clear paint that gets applied on a finished surface.
The coating prohibits any kind of spray paint from sticking. It’s like a protective clear coat for art and other public property that is at risk of being defaced.
How Does Anti-Graffiti Paint Repel Spray Paint?
As mentioned, spray paints won’t bond to the anti-graffiti coating You see, the siloxane ingredients used in anti-graffiti paint products are designed to resist acrylic spray paints commonly used for graffiti.
The chemicals simply won’t bond together, so the paint just remains over the coating. This makes it easy to wipe off without damaging any of the paint underneath the anti-graffiti coating.
Further, the materials in some anti-graffiti paint products also provide a protective barrier for the surface from moisture and other kinds of damage. For this project, it meant that the paint used in the mural would remain bright, despite weather conditions and color-fading sunlight.
Coquitlam Painting Project for the Community
As we’ve mentioned, AZ painting was approached for a painting project at a park in Coquitlam. This project consisted of working with other mural artists and contractors to improve a local community park.
For one side of the mural, we used anti-graffiti green paint. The anti-graffiti paint not only resists spray paint but is also designed for color vibrance and durability.
This was important, as the mural wall is also a popular rock-climbing wall and would see a lot of damage in the future. After the rest of the mural wall was completed, we applied a thick barrier of durable anti-graffiti coating to the entire concrete wall.
As we’ve said, using this anti-graffiti paint meant that if any potential graffiti “artists” tried to tag or paint over a mural, it can be easily cleaned off without affecting the mural painting.