A Hand Painted Mountain Mural for the Wall You Keep Ignoring
The wall was the problem. Not the whole room, just that one stretch of it, the blank rectangle over the fireplace or behind the reception desk that every visitor’s eye slides to and then quietly judges. You have hung a print there, taken it down, propped a framed photo that never looked right, and gone back to blank. A hand painted mountain mural fixes that wall in a way a poster never will, because the Mountain Lake Wall Mural from Colorado Ski Chairs is not printed and it is not stock. It is a mountain lake and a stand of golden aspens painted by hand across real snowboard panels, built in Manitou Springs, Colorado, and made to hang indoors or out.
What the Mountain Lake Wall Mural actually is
Start with what it is made of, because that is where most people are surprised. The piece in the photo is five snowboard panels, mounted side by side and painted as one continuous scene. A mountain lake sits still under a ridgeline, aspens turning gold along the shore, the water holding the color of the sky. Look closer and you can still read the shape of the boards under the paint, the sidecut, the slight curve at the nose. These are real snowboards that had a first life on a mountain, cleaned up and turned into a canvas that has some history baked into it before the brush ever touches down.
That is the whole idea behind a hand painted mountain mural done this way. A flat sheet of MDF would take the same paint. It would also look like a flat sheet of MDF. Snowboard panels give the surface a subtle texture and a story, and they let Colorado Ski Chairs keep doing what the shop has always done, which is take gear that would otherwise sit in a garage or a landfill and put it back to work. The mural you get is one of a kind, painted by a person, not run off a printer in a warehouse. No two ridgelines match exactly, and that is the point.
The version pictured is a mountain lake with golden aspens, and it is ready to ship. But the Mountain Lake Wall Mural is really a starting point. The scene, the size, the number of panels, and the finish are all things you can change. More on that further down, because the customizing is where this piece gets interesting.
Why snowboards make a better canvas than a blank panel
There is a practical reason the shop paints murals on old snowboards and not on hardware store plywood, and it has to do with how these panels are built to live. A snowboard is engineered to survive a Colorado winter. It gets waxed, iced, dropped, and thrown in a truck bed, and it holds up. As a wall panel, that toughness carries over. The board does not warp the first humid summer, it does not soak up water on a covered porch, and it takes an exterior oil finish beautifully.
Using real boards also solves a problem every custom mural runs into, which is scale. One board is a narrow vertical stripe. Five boards mounted together give you a wide horizontal canvas big enough to read from across a lobby. Because each panel is separate, the shop can build the mural to the width of your wall instead of forcing your wall to fit a standard frame. Want a taller version, a wider one, a three panel piece for a smaller entry? The panel count flexes to the space.
And there is the quiet part that most buyers appreciate once they hear it. Every board in a hand painted mountain mural is one that already lived a life. Somebody rode it. The board earned its retirement, and instead of ending up in a dumpster it ends up on a wall, holding a mountain scene. For a company that wants a sustainability story that is actually true, that matters. For a cabin owner who used to ride, it just feels right.
How the scene gets painted
Every Mountain Lake Wall Mural is hand painted in exterior oils, the same weatherproof paint the shop uses on its outdoor benches and Adirondack chairs. That is not a small detail. Exterior oil paint is what lets this mural hang on a covered patio, a fence line, or an exposed entryway without the colors going chalky after one season in the sun. The mountain lake scene in the photo, the deep blue water, the gold of the aspens, the shadow along the ridge, all of it is built to stay that color for years, indoors or out.
The painting is done by hand, layer over layer, which is why the shop calls these murals and not prints. A print is a print. A mural has brush work in it, depth where the artist built up the water, soft edges where the aspens fade into the far bank. If you stand a foot away you can see the hand in it. That is exactly what a printed decal cannot give you, and it is why a hand painted mountain mural reads as art on the wall rather than as signage.
Because it is painted rather than printed, the scene is yours to direct. The mountain lake is the signature, but the shop can shift the season, darken the sky to a storm, warm it to a sunset, or paint a specific peak you can name from your own driveway. Tell them what your view looks like and they will paint your view.
Where a mountain lake mural actually belongs
The honest answer is anywhere you have a wall doing nothing. But a few spots come up again and again, so here is where a hand painted mountain mural tends to land.
In a mountain house or cabin, it goes over the fireplace, along a stairwell, or on the big blank wall in the great room that architects love to leave for the owner to figure out. It gives the room the view even on the side of the house that faces the driveway. In a finished basement or a walkout that never gets real daylight, a painted mountain lake brings the outdoors to a room that does not have a window to spare.
Then there is the whole other life this piece has, which is commercial. The product started as a way for businesses to turn a functional wall into something worth looking at. It hides the ugly stuff, breaker boxes, patched drywall, the seam where two remodels met and never quite lined up. A row of snowboard panels floats over all of it and turns the eyesore into the focal point. Reception areas, waiting rooms, conference rooms, brewery tap walls, hotel lobbies, real estate offices that want to feel like Colorado the second you walk in, all of them are natural homes for a mountain lake mural. It is the wall people photograph, which for a business is free marketing every time a guest posts the picture.
Because it is weatherproof, it does not have to stay inside. It hangs on a covered patio, a pergola, a fence line, or the exterior wall of a mountain rental where the first thing a guest sees when they pull up is a hand painted mountain scene instead of blank siding.
Make it yours, from the scene to the size
Here is where the Mountain Lake Wall Mural stops being a product and starts being a commission. The pictured mountain lake is one option. The shop builds these to order, so most of what you see can change.
The scene is the biggest lever. Keep the mountain lake, or ask for a different peak, a sunset instead of a clear day, elk or a moose in the foreground, a river instead of a lake, or the exact ridgeline you look at from your porch. If you have a photo of a place that means something, that is the best brief you can give. The size and panel count flex too. A smaller entry might take three panels, a long lobby wall might want six or seven, and the shop scales the composition so the scene reads right at whatever width you need.
For the folks who want the extra wow, there are two upgrades worth knowing about. The first is integrated backlighting, which puts a soft glow behind the panels so the mountain scene reads even at night and the whole piece looks like it is lit from within. The second is laser cut logos and shapes repurposed from upcycled skis and snowboards, mounted onto or beside the mural for dimension. Both are the kind of thing you talk through on a call, because the right answer depends on your wall and your budget.
Adding a logo or a brand, done the right way
A lot of the interest in this piece comes from businesses that want their brand on the wall, so it is worth being precise about how that works, because it is not what most people assume. The mountain scene is hand painted. A logo is not.
A company logo goes on as a logo decal, floated onto the painted background so the mark holds its exact shape and its exact brand colors. That is the only way to keep a logo crisp and correct, because a hand painted logo will always drift a little from the real thing, and no brand manager wants their mark almost right. For a more dimensional look, the shop offers aluminum appliques and plastic appliques as alternatives, each priced differently, and either can go on the front or set off to the side. The painted mountain lake stays the hero, and the brand sits cleanly on top of it. Because branded work varies so much by size, materials, and how many you need, branded and logo pricing is quoted on a call rather than listed as a flat number.
The short version, a mountain mural is painted by hand, a logo is applied as a decal or an applique. If a business wants both, a Colorado scene with the company mark floated in the corner, that is a common and easy build, and it is one of the reasons offices keep coming back for these.
Care and durability through the seasons
The reason a hand painted mountain mural on snowboard panels lasts is that both halves of it are built for weather. The boards are made to survive a season on a mountain, and the exterior oil paint is made to survive the sun. Put them together and you get a wall piece that does not need babying.
Indoors, care is basically nothing. Dust it once in a while, keep it out of a spot where it bakes in direct afternoon sun all day if you can, and it will look the same in ten years. Outdoors, it holds up to the normal run of weather on a covered or semi covered wall, the kind of exposure a good outdoor sign gets. It is not meant to sit unprotected under a waterfall of snowmelt for a decade, but on a covered patio or a fence line it takes rain, cold, and Colorado sun without going dull. The mounting is straightforward, and if you are hanging it outdoors or on masonry, the shop will walk you through the hardware so the panels sit flat and stay put.
If years down the road you want the scene refreshed or a panel touched up, the shop that painted it is the same shop that can service it. That is the advantage of buying a hand painted mountain mural from the people who made it rather than a mass produced print from a box store that cannot help you once it fades.
Ordering one, or ordering twenty
Ordering a single Mountain Lake Wall Mural is simple. The pictured mountain lake version is ready to ship, so if that scene works for your wall you are not waiting on a build queue. If you want a custom scene, a specific size, backlighting, or a logo, that starts with a call to 303.775.7273 so the shop can quote it to your wall and your timeline.
The other side of this, and the reason a lot of businesses find their way here, is volume. This piece scales. A hotel group can order matched murals for every property, each one tuned to its local mountain. A brewery with three taprooms can get three related scenes that clearly belong to the same brand. A company outfitting a new headquarters can order a lobby mural, a boardroom piece, and a set of smaller panels for the break rooms, all in the same hand, all carrying the same brand colors or logo treatment. Because these are custom branded pieces built to order, bulk and matched runs are normal work for the shop, not a special favor. Logo and brand color matching, matched sizes across a set, and a single point of contact for a whole property are exactly the kind of thing this product was built to handle. If you are buying for a team, a franchise, or a procurement list, one call gets the whole run scoped.
The mountain house gift that is not another coaster set
There is a certain person who is genuinely hard to buy for. They have the house, the deck, the good coffee, and a garage full of gear. Give them another candle or a coaster set and it disappears into a drawer by February. A mountain lake mural does not disappear. It goes on the wall, it gets asked about, and it is the thing they point to when someone new walks in. That is a rare quality in a gift, the kind that keeps giving you credit long after the wrapping is gone.
It works as a housewarming piece for someone who just closed on a cabin, a retirement gift for the skier finally moving to the mountains full time, or an anniversary present for the couple whose whole relationship has a specific peak attached to it. If you know the view they love, the shop can paint that exact view, which turns a nice gift into a personal one. And because the pictured mountain lake version is ready to ship, you are not gambling on a build queue when a date is bearing down on you. For a gift that needs to be genuinely custom, a call to 303.775.7273 gets it started with enough lead time to do it right.
Even for the giver who does not ski, the story lands. Reclaimed snowboards, hand painted in Colorado, made to last outdoors. It is a gift with a reason behind it, not just a thing that matches the couch. That is usually what people are reaching for when they say they want something meaningful.
Why buy from Colorado Ski Chairs
Plenty of places will sell you a printed canvas of a mountain. Very few will paint you a real one on retired snowboards and stand behind it. Colorado Ski Chairs has been building furniture and decor out of recycled skis and snowboards for years, out of a shop in Manitou Springs, right under the peaks that show up in the murals. The mountains in a hand painted mountain mural are not stock photos to the people painting them. They are the drive to work.
Buying from the maker also means you are talking to the person who can actually change things. Want the sky darker, the aspens further along into fall, your own logo in the corner, a size nobody else offers? That is a conversation, not a support ticket. The shop ships nationwide, so a mountain lake mural painted in Colorado can hang on a wall in Texas or Vermont or anywhere else, and it still carries a little of the place it came from. See more painted work in the Wall Art collection, or browse the fully made to order pieces under Custom Designs.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the Mountain Lake Wall Mural made of?
It is a hand painted mountain mural rendered across real snowboard panels. The pictured piece uses five upcycled snowboards mounted side by side and painted as one continuous mountain lake scene with golden aspens, finished in weatherproof exterior oils so it can hang indoors or outdoors.
Can I get a different scene or a custom size?
Yes. The mountain lake is the signature version, but the scene, the size, and the number of panels are all customizable. The shop can paint a different peak, season, or a specific view you send a photo of, and can scale the panel count to fit your wall. Custom work starts with a call to 303.775.7273.
Can you put my company logo on it?
Yes, and it is done the right way. The mountain scene is hand painted, and your logo goes on as a logo decal floated onto the painted background so it keeps its exact shape and brand colors, with aluminum or plastic appliques available as alternatives. Branded and logo pricing is quoted on a call since it varies by size and materials.
Can it really hang outside?
Yes. Both the snowboard panels and the exterior oil paint are built for weather, so a hand painted mountain mural holds up on a covered patio, a pergola, or a fence line the way a quality outdoor sign does. For long outdoor life, a covered or semi covered wall is best.
Give the blank wall a view
That empty rectangle has been waiting long enough. A hand painted mountain mural on real snowboard panels turns it into the best looking wall in the building, whether the building is a cabin, a lobby, or a taproom. Take a look at the Mountain Lake Wall Mural, or call 303.775.7273 and tell Colorado Ski Chairs what your view looks like. They will paint it.
