Fabrication November 4, 2026 5 min read

Roll width, seams, and when you really need 500 cm

Short answer: you need a wider roll than the finished graphic, not the same width — hems, pockets and silicone-edge beading all eat material at the edge. And before you accept a seam, check whether rotating the artwork 90° lets the graphic come off the roll in one piece, because on a 500 cm roll a surprising number of large backdrops do.

A seam in a backlit graphic is not a cosmetic compromise. It is a line that transmits light differently from the material either side of it, which means that on a light box it will show — brighter or darker than its surroundings depending on how the seam was made, and visible from further away than anyone expects. In a photographic image across a wall, it is the one element the eye reliably finds.

How wide a roll do I need for a given finished graphic?

Start with the finished dimension and add the edge treatment, twice:

Silicone-edge (SEG): typically 15–25 mm per edge for the bead and the seam that holds it.
Pole pocket: depends on the pole, but commonly 75–120 mm per pocketed edge.
Hem and grommet: around 25–50 mm per edge.

So a 3100 mm finished SEG panel needs roughly 3140–3150 mm of fabric, which a 320 cm roll covers and a 310 cm roll does not. That 10 mm between two roll widths is the whole decision, and it is why "my graphic is 310 cm and the roll is 310 cm" is the most common near-miss in this category.

Then subtract shrinkage, which pulls the printed width in by its own fraction — between 0.3 % and 2.3 % across our range. On a 320 cm roll, 2.3 % is 74 mm. Edge allowance and shrinkage both work against you and they compound.

When do I actually need a 500 cm roll?

When the finished graphic exceeds about 3150 mm in both dimensions, and a seam is unacceptable.

That is a narrower set of jobs than it sounds, because of rotation. Standard roll widths in this category run 160, 250, 310, 320 and — for Eos — 500 cm, against roll lengths of 30 to 100 m. Length is effectively unlimited for a single panel; width is the constraint. So a 4 m wide by 2.6 m tall backdrop does not need a 500 cm roll at all: rotate the artwork 90° and it is 2.6 m across the roll width and 4 m down the length, which fits a 320 cm roll with allowance to spare.

Two layouts of a 4000 by 2600 mm backdrop against a 320 cm roll: as laid out it overhangs by 800 mm, rotated 90 degrees it fits with 600 mm to spare — Rotating the artwork is the first thing to check, and it removes the seam more often than people expect.

The jobs that genuinely need 500 cm are the ones where both dimensions are large — a 4.5 m × 3.4 m stage backdrop, say — or where the artwork cannot be rotated because the fabric's own properties are directional.

Can I always just rotate the artwork?

No, and the reasons are in the spec sheet.

Knitted and woven display fabrics are not isotropic. Their numbers differ between length (warp) and width (weft), sometimes by a lot. Eos measures 407 N breaking strength in length against 804 N in width. Aureline measures 388 N against 1107 N — nearly three times as strong across the roll as along it. Elongation at break differs the same way: Tesa stretches 56 % in length and 108 % in width.

For a tension frame, that anisotropy is a design input. The stretch axis of the fabric should line up with the axis you need to stretch to seat the panel, and a 90° rotation swaps them. It also swaps the shrinkage axes, which changes your compensation factor — a fabric that shrinks 1.0 % in length and 0.3 % in width behaves differently rotated, and if your scaling is set up for one orientation it will be wrong in the other.

And on a backlit graphic, a woven structure's weave direction interacts with the LED array behind it. Rotating can move a faint moiré from invisible to visible, or the other way around.

So rotation is the first thing to check and not automatically the answer. It saves a seam when the mechanics allow it.

What about custom widths?

They are often the better answer than either a seam or a rotation, and they are frequently overlooked because they are not in the standard-widths line of the sheet.

Most of our range is made to order between roughly 100 cm and 320 cm, and Eos from 110 cm up to 500 cm. For a production run of identical panels, ordering the exact width means no trim waste on every single panel, which on a long run pays for the lead time quickly. For a one-off it rarely does.

The maths worth doing before you call: finished width, plus edge allowance on both edges, divided by one minus the shrinkage fraction. That is the width to ask for, and it is usually a number like 3187 mm rather than a round one.

If I do have to seam, how do I make it least visible?

Put it where the artwork hides it — along a hard edge in the image, not through a face or an open sky gradient. Plan it at the design stage rather than discovering it at output, because a seam placed by the roll width rather than by the image is the one that lands in the worst possible place.

On a backlit panel, assume it will show and decide whether the location is acceptable before you print. On a front-lit graphic you have much more latitude.

Roll widths, custom width ranges and the directional strength figures for every fabric are on the product pages, and the site's fit check will tell you whether a given finished size comes off a given roll in one piece — including whether rotating it saves the seam. If you would rather have us work it through with you, send us the dimensions.