You've seen it. Tropical leaves. Maybe a monstera, maybe a banana palm, maybe both. Pink neon script that says something like "But First, Coffee" or "Good Vibes Only." Perhaps a flamingo. Terrazzo patterns.
Scroll through any restaurant's Instagram tagged photos and you'll notice something: a lot of the "Instagram walls" start to look familiar. Sometimes very familiar.
So what's going on? And how do you stand out?
The Instagram Wall Industrial Complex
Sometime around 2016, restaurants figured out that a photogenic wall could generate free marketing. Customers would take selfies, post them, tag the location, and suddenly the restaurant had user-generated content reaching thousands of potential customers.
It worked. It still works. More than 76% of consumers have entered an unfamiliar business solely because something caught their eye. In the Instagram era, that "something" increasingly meant a mural designed specifically for photos.
The problem? Many copied the same playbook. The same Pinterest boards. The same Pantone colors.
Tropical Leaves
There's a reason tropical murals took off. They photograph beautifully. They suggest freshness and energy. They work with almost any food photography. We've painted plenty of them ourselves, and when done thoughtfully, they're genuinely striking.
The challenge isn't the aesthetic itself. It's that what once felt fresh has become familiar. When a design choice is everywhere, it stops signaling "we're different" and starts blending into the background. The goal of a custom mural is to make your space memorable, and that's harder to do when the look is one people have seen dozens of times before.
The Neon Script
These signs became popular for good reason. They're playful, photogenic, and give customers something to pose with. But because they've been so widely adopted (often purchased from the same suppliers), they've lost some of their punch. A phrase that's meant to feel personal and quirky lands differently when it's identical to the sign three blocks away.
It's just worth asking: does this say something specific about us, or could it be in any restaurant?
Why Sameness Happens
It makes sense when you think about it. Restaurant owners are juggling a hundred decisions at once, and when it comes to the mural, the safest move is to look at what's already working.
So the owner pulls together a folder of reference images from Instagram, from competitors, from design blogs. The artist delivers something in that vein. The result looks good! It just also looks… familiar. Not because anyone made a bad decision, but because everyone's drawing from the same well.
Timeline pressure plays a role too. Vinyl wall wraps and digitally printed murals can be installed in hours. Hand painted murals take days or weeks. When you're racing toward an opening date, speed often wins.
What Actually Stands Out
The restaurants with murals that really stick in people's minds tend to have one thing in common: they got specific.
Maybe that means going local, with imagery that references the neighborhood or its history. A ghost sign-inspired mural in Highland Park tells a story that's rooted in place, something a competitor across town couldn't just copy.
Maybe it means embracing something unexpected. Not every mural needs to be safe or pretty. Sometimes bold or slightly offbeat choices land harder than something designed to please everyone.
Or maybe it's just telling your actual story. A family-owned restaurant with a mural depicting their grandmother's kitchen in Oaxaca. A coffee shop with hand-lettered signage showing their sourcing regions. When Parks Project asked us to paint their mural, they came with a clear vision: something that would bring their mission of protecting public lands to life. That kind of brief is what creates something truly worth photographing.
The Trend Trap
Trends move fast. What feels fresh right now will eventually feel dated, the same way chevron patterns, Edison bulbs, and the whole reclaimed-wood-everything era did.
That's worth thinking about, because a hand painted mural is going to be on your wall for a long time. You want something that still feels right in five or ten years, not something that screams 2019.
The spaces that age best tend to be the ones that weren't chasing trends in the first place. They invested in something specific to them, something that felt original rather than on-trend.
That's the thinking behind the Whittier LGBTQ Center mural we painted. It's an 80-foot installation with a bold geometric rainbow design and illustrated portraits. It's not referencing a moment in design. It's telling a specific story about a specific community. That's the kind of work that holds up.
How to Brief a Muralist
If you're commissioning a mural, a few things help:
Start with your story, not your Pinterest board. Reference images are fine, but the conversation should really be about your restaurant, your neighborhood, your customers. What actually makes you you?
Look for a muralist with a point of view. The best ones have a distinctive style. You're hiring them for their vision, not just their ability to paint what's in your reference folder.
And if you can swing it, consider hand-painted. Yes, it costs more and takes longer. But people notice. There's a quality and texture to it that vinyl just doesn't have.
One more thing: try to think beyond the Instagram wall. A mural that only works as a selfie backdrop is fine, but it's only doing one job. A mural that tells your story, reinforces your brand, and shapes the whole feel of the room? That's doing a lot more for you.
The Real Flex
You know what actually impresses people? Walking into a place and seeing something they've genuinely never seen before.
Not a trend. Not a saying they've read on ten other walls. Just something that feels like it belongs to this restaurant, in thisneighborhood, made by this team.
That's what gets people to stop scrolling. That's what they actually talk about.
When Rivian came to us, they weren't looking for what every other EV company was doing. They wanted something that felt like craftsmanship and innovation, because that's what their brand is about. When Sneakertopia needed art for a space rooted in street culture, hand-painted work wasn't just decoration. It was the whole point.
And when Dr. Dre funded a mural at Compton High School's new Performing Arts Center, it wasn't a small project. Five artists, 41 gallons of specialized paint, three weeks of work, over a thousand square feet of wall. Now it's something students walk past every day. That kind of permanence and craft isn't something you get with a vinyl wrap.
If you're thinking about a mural that actually feels like yours, we'd love to talk. Pulling Paint designs and paints custom murals and hand painted signage for restaurants and businesses throughout Southern California. Get in touch.
