The Large Wall Art for a Living Room, Painted on Snowboards
There is one wall in almost every house that never gets dealt with. It is the big one in the living room, the one behind the couch or over the mantel, and it stays blank for years because nothing store bought ever feels big enough or personal enough to earn it. You hang a framed print and it looks like a stamp on a billboard. You leave it empty and the whole room feels unfinished. The Mountain Lake Wall Mural from Colorado Ski Chairs is large wall art for a living room that finally fills that space with something real: a hand painted mountain lake and golden aspens rendered across five upcycled snowboards mounted side by side, built to order in Colorado and shipping nationwide.
What the Mountain Lake Wall Mural Actually Is
Let’s be plain about it, because the honest version is more interesting than the marketing version anyway. This is a mural painted across five real snowboards. Not canvas, not a printed panel, not vinyl peeled off a roll. Five actual boards that carried somebody down a hill for a decade get cleaned up, mounted in a row, and turned into one continuous scene. A mountain lake sits in the middle distance, a stand of golden aspens catches the light, and a ridgeline runs behind it all. The seams between the boards are part of the look, not a flaw to hide. Up close you can still read that these were snowboards. Step back and your eye reads one wide painting.
The pictured version, the mountain lake with the aspens, is a ready to ship piece at $695. That is the one in the photo, painted, finished, and waiting. If you want a different scene or a different size, that becomes a made to order build, and we will talk about that further down. For now, know that this is large wall art for a living room in the literal sense. Five boards side by side is a genuinely wide piece, the kind of scale that blank wall has been quietly asking for.
One thing worth saying early, because Colorado Ski Chairs sells a lot of different things and it matters that you know what you are looking at. This is wall art. It is not a chair, so none of the ski chair math applies to it. Our Adirondack ski chairs take four to five pairs of skis each, and a snowboard chair needs at least three boards to build a seat you can trust. This piece is different. It is flat art on a wall, so the count is about how wide you want the scene, not how much weight a seat has to hold. Five boards make the standard mural. A bigger wall might take six or seven. A smaller nook might take three. The number follows the wall, not a rule.
Why Five Snowboards and Not a Canvas
You could paint this same scene on stretched canvas and sell it for less. We know that. We do it this way on purpose, and the reason is partly stubbornness and partly that the boards are just better.
Start with the obvious. A snowboard is built to survive a Colorado winter strapped to somebody’s feet. It is a laminated, sealed, weatherproof object engineered to take abuse in wet cold conditions for years. That is exactly the durability you want in a piece of wall art, and it comes free with the material. Canvas sags, fades, and hates humidity. A board does not care. Hang this in a three season porch, a covered patio, or a bathroom with a hot shower running twice a day, and it holds up because it was already built for worse.
Then there is the texture. A painted board has a slight curve to it, a little rise and camber, so light moves across the surface as you cross the room. A flat print just sits there. The mural catches morning light differently than evening light, and the aspens seem to shift a little with it. You do not get that off a printer.
And there is the story, which is the part people actually keep talking about at parties. Every board in this piece rode a real mountain before it hung on your wall. Somebody learned to link turns on one of them. Somebody probably ate it hard in a terrain park on another. Now they are a lake and a grove of aspens in your living room. That is a better answer to “where did you get that” than a receipt from a big box store. Reclaimed material with a past beats new material with a barcode, at least in a mountain house.
Where This Kind of Wall Art Belongs
The name says living room, and that is the most common home for it, but it goes a lot of places. The point of a wide piece is that it wants a wide wall, and most homes have more of those than people realize once they start looking.
In a living room it goes over the couch or above a low console, at the scale where it reads as the anchor of the room instead of an afterthought. In a great room with a two story wall, a larger custom build can hold that vertical space without looking lost. Over a fireplace it works if the mantel is wide enough, and the mountain scene plays nicely with a stone or timber surround. In a finished basement or a walkout it warms up a space that usually gets stuck with whatever art was left over from upstairs.
It is not just a house piece either. This started life as a product for lobbies and boardrooms, and it still belongs there. A wide mountain mural behind a reception desk gives a Colorado office a sense of place the second someone walks in. It fills the long blank wall in a conference room. It covers a stairwell that nobody knew what to do with. Short term rental owners like it because it photographs well and it tells guests exactly what kind of trip they booked before they have set down a bag. Restaurants, tasting rooms, and lodges use pieces like this to give a space character that a framed poster never will.
Because it is weatherproof, the outdoor options are real, not a stretch. A covered patio, a pool house wall, a screened porch, an outdoor bar. Anywhere the piece is under a roof and out of direct standing water, it lives happily outside and takes the seasons without complaint.
The Scene, and How It Gets Painted
The standard scene is a mountain lake with golden aspens and a ridgeline behind. It is painted by hand, one board at a time, then read as a whole so the water lines up and the tree line carries across the seams. Because a person paints it and not a machine, no two of these are identical. Your lake will not match the one in the photo down to the ripple, and that is the point. You are buying a painting, not a copy.
The paint is high quality exterior oil, the same weatherproof grade we use on our outdoor chairs and benches. That is what lets this piece live on a covered patio or in a steamy bathroom without the color giving up. The finish holds its depth. The blues stay blue, the aspen gold stays warm, and hail season does not turn it chalky. We seal the whole thing so it can take the sun that comes through a big south facing window without fading out over a couple of summers.
The golden aspens are not an accident either. Anybody who has driven a Colorado pass in late September knows that gold, the way a whole hillside turns at once and holds it for about ten days before the wind takes it. Painting that into the scene is a way of keeping the best week of fall on the wall all year, so the room reads like October even when it is February outside and the real aspens are bare sticks. It is a small thing, but it is the kind of small thing that makes a person stop in front of the piece for a second on their way through the room, which is more than most wall art ever gets.
The hand painted part matters for a reason that goes beyond looks. Because it is painted rather than printed, we can change anything. The scene is not locked. If you want your own peak, your own lake, or the specific slope you can see from your driveway, we paint that instead. If you want the aspens swapped for pines, or a sunset sky instead of a daytime one, we do that too. A painting is editable in a way a print never is, and that is the whole advantage of doing it by hand.
Making It Yours: Size, Scene, and Panel Count
The ready to ship mountain lake is the fast option. Order it and it ships. But the piece is genuinely customizable, and most of the interesting orders are the custom ones.
Size comes first. Five boards make the standard width, which suits most living room walls. A bigger wall, a great room, or a long lobby can take more panels for a wider scene. A smaller wall or a nook can drop to three or four. Because the panels are individual boards, scaling the piece up or down is a matter of how many go on the wall, so you are not stuck with one fixed size the way you are with a framed print.
Scene is next. Any mountain, any lake, any season. People send us photos of a view that means something to them, a cabin they rented every summer, the peak they got engaged on, the run their dad always skied. We paint from that. You can name the mountain and we will get the ridgeline right. You can pick the palette, the time of day, whether the sky is clear or storming.
There are a couple of extras worth knowing about. We can build in integrated backlighting, so the piece glows from behind at night, which turns it from wall art into a light feature in a dark room or a bar. And we can add laser cut logos or shapes made from upcycled skis and snowboards, mounted onto the mural, for a bit of dimensional detail. Both of those are conversations rather than checkboxes, so if either sounds interesting, the fastest path is a phone call to 303.775.7273.
A Quick Word on Logos and Branding
This piece started as a product for offices, so branding comes up a lot, and there is one thing we are careful and honest about every time. The mountain scene is hand painted. A company logo is not.
Here is why. A hand painted logo, no matter how skilled the painter, drifts. The proportions shift a hair, a color mixes slightly warm or slightly cool, and a brand mark that is supposed to be exact ends up almost right, which for a brand is worse than wrong. So we do not freehand logos. Your logo goes on as a logo decal floated onto the painted background, which holds the exact shape and the exact color your brand guidelines call for. If you want something with more physical presence, we can do an aluminum applique or a plastic applique instead, each priced differently, mounted front and center or off to the side. The scene behind it is still ours, hand painted, weatherproof, one of a kind. The mark on top of it is precise because it has to be.
Because branded work varies so much by size, material, and how the logo is applied, we quote it on a call rather than listing a price. Bulk and matched sets for a whole office or a chain of locations get quoted the same way. Call 303.775.7273 and we will walk through what your space needs.
Built to Last, Indoors or Out
We touched on durability already, but it is worth pulling together, because it is the reason this piece is a buy once item rather than a replace it in three years item.
The base material, the snowboards, are already weatherproof by design. The paint is exterior grade oil, sealed. The result is a piece rated for indoor or covered outdoor use. Covered is the operative word. It will take humidity, temperature swings, the occasional splash, and the light from a big bright window. What it does not want is to sit unprotected in standing rain or full winter snow load, the same as you would not leave a nice outdoor chair out in a blizzard. Keep it under a roofline, a porch, an eave, a covered patio, and it holds up for the long haul.
Cleaning is nothing. Wipe it with a damp cloth. No special products, no sealants to reapply, no annual maintenance ritual. It is furniture grade in its toughness, which is what you would expect from a shop that spends most of its time building chairs and benches meant to live outside in the Rockies.
Mounting is straightforward. It hangs like any substantial piece of wall art. For a heavier custom build, hitting studs is the smart move, and we are happy to talk through the specifics of your wall when the piece ships so it goes up level and stays put.
Who Buys It, and Why
The most common buyer is someone finishing a mountain house or a cabin, or someone in a flatland suburb who wants a little of the mountains on the wall year round. They have the big blank wall, they are tired of it, and they want something that says where they would rather be. This piece does that without tipping into kitsch. It is a real painting on real reclaimed gear, so it reads as craft, not novelty.
Then there are the gift buyers, and this is a strong gift for a specific kind of person. The skier or rider who has everything. The couple who just built the deck. The parents whose kids grew up on the local hill and whose old boards are still in the garage. For that last group, the sentimental version is the move. Send us the boards that mean something, the kid’s first setup, the board somebody rode for fifteen seasons, and we build the mural around them. The scene becomes yours in a way a bought piece never could, because it is literally made from your winters.
On the business side, the buyers are office managers, hospitality owners, and anyone furnishing a space that guests or clients see. A wide mountain mural is the wall people notice on the way in and photograph on the way out. It gives a Colorado business an unmistakable sense of place, and because it is built from reclaimed material and made in the USA, it comes with a real sustainability story instead of the kind you have to squint to believe. For a company that cares about that, or has to report on it, it is a piece that quietly checks the box while looking like art.
How Ordering Works
The ready to ship mountain lake mural is the simple path. It is the pictured piece at $695, and it ships to most of the lower 48. If that scene and that scale work for your wall, that is the whole transaction.
A custom build takes a little more back and forth and it is worth it. Tell us the wall, the scene, and the size. If you have a photo of the view you want or the boards you want us to use, send them. We confirm the plan, build it in Manitou Springs, and ship it out. Production for a custom piece typically runs a couple of weeks, longer if you are sending in your own boards, because good painting does not rush.
The fastest way to start a custom or branded order is the phone. Call 303.775.7273 and you will talk to someone who actually builds these. You can also browse the rest of what we make in the wall art collection and the Custom Designs catalog to see how the murals sit alongside the chairs, benches, and signs. Colorado Ski Chairs builds all of it by hand in Manitou Springs, Colorado, from reclaimed skis and snowboards, and ships nationwide.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is the Mountain Lake Wall Mural really made from snowboards?
Yes. The standard mural is hand painted across five real upcycled snowboards mounted side by side as one continuous scene. Colorado Ski Chairs builds it in Manitou Springs, Colorado, and ships nationwide.
How big is it, and can I change the size?
Five boards make the standard living room width. The size is adjustable because the panels are individual boards, so a great room or a lobby can take more panels for a wider scene and a smaller wall can take fewer. Tell us the wall and we scale to fit.
Can you paint my own mountain or use my own boards?
Yes to both. Because the scene is hand painted, we can paint any peak, lake, or season you want, including a view from a photo you send. For a sentimental build, send in the boards that mean something and we paint the mural on your boards. Custom murals may carry an additional fee.
Can you put our company logo on it?
The mountain scene is hand painted, but a logo is never painted freehand, because a brand mark has to hold its exact shape and color. Your logo goes on as a precise logo decal, with aluminum or plastic appliques as alternatives. Branded and bulk pricing is quoted on a call at 303.775.7273.
Can it go outside?
Yes, under cover. It is built from weatherproof snowboards and finished in sealed exterior oil, so a covered patio, porch, or pool house is fine. Keep it out of standing rain and direct snow load, the same as any good outdoor piece.
That wall behind the couch has been waiting a long time. If you want large wall art for a living room that actually earns the space, and carries a little Colorado and a little history while it does, take a look at the Mountain Lake Wall Mural or call 303.775.7273 and tell us what your view looks like.
