Coupons for Canvas Prints from Vistaprint.com – Not to be confused with their cheaper cousin, “mounted prints,” premium canvas prints from Vistaprint are a beautiful way to display your favorite photos as wall art.
Here’s our Vistaprint canvas review plus a coupon for 10% off plus free shipping:
- Vistaprint: On-Site Promotions – Up to 40% off or free shipping including canvas prints at vistaprint.com!
- View our Top 10 Deals – A list of all the best Vistaprint coupons, updated daily
Vistaprint Canvas: Customer Reviews
Before I get into my own review for Vistaprint canvas, you should know that there are over 100 customer reviews for canvas prints on vistaprint.com:
Just click on the star-rating to see how customers rate Vistaprint canvas prints in areas like: Ease of Design, Product Quality, and Product Value:
View product reviews at vistaprint.com
Ok, customer reviews of Vistaprint’s canvas prints are pretty positive. Now it’s time for me to design and order one myself!
Vistaprint Canvas Prints: Ok, Now My Review!
Canvas prints are a way to show off or preserve your best photos and memories. After a two-week trip up the California coastline I had no shortage of candidates to print on canvas to remember our trip and some of the breath-taking views that we saw.
*Tip: Don’t be tempted to go for the cheaper, mounted prints, which are categorized under “canvas prints” but essentially printed on thicker paper stock, not canvas!
So, here’s a review of my own experience and the final product:
#1. Don’t Pay Full Price; Always Use a Coupon Towards Their Canvas Prints!
The Vistaprint.com website displays different pricing, depending on where you arrived from. For example, if you just type their URL in and go to the site, you’ll probably pay more than if you did a 20 second search for coupons.
There is always a promo code or coupon of some sort available that works site-wide, towards photo gifts, or specifically for canvas prints. For new customers you should consider the “20% off + Free shipping on $50+ promotion, and all customers should aim for at least a 25% discount off their regular price.
Simply clicking on a promotional link will usually apply the discount, and they usually notify you which promo code has been applied as soon as you arrive on their site from a promotional link or banner.
#2. Designing Your Canvas Print
First, have a large photo ready to upload, and choose a Size for Your Canvas Print. Vistaprint offers canvas prints in these sizes:
- 8×12, 12×12, 12×16, 16×24, or 24×36
You can print your canvas horizontally or vertically, but unlike other products, there are no design templates for canvas with borders or text. (you upload the complete design)
For the most accurate results, design your image in CMYK color mode, instead of RGB. If you have a photo-editing program like Photoshop, it’s easy to save your image in this color mode. A few reviews complain that the image printed darker than expected, which is probably due to color mode.
You can upload your image from a number of sources including Facebook or your image library if you’re a returning customer. Beware: If you do upload a photo from Facebook, make sure it is big enough! Printing of all kinds should be done at high resolution CMYK; I recommend at least 150 dpi or more. If you have the ability to work with a 300 dpi image, go with that. That means any image less than about 2500 pixels wide won’t work on any size canvas.
After you upload your image, you’ll see a preview screen like this:
*Tip: Always upload a high resolution photo! After choosing one or more photos, I can’t stress enough the importance of using a high-resolution photo. These canvas prints are much larger than a common 5×7 prints and holiday cards, and you can’t get away with using small photos.
If you are uploading a file from a phone or device, make sure that it’s the biggest version available. Any files showing a size less than 1mb are going to be too small.
Tip: Beware of the Safety line, and the sides of the canvas
Unlike designing and printing on a flat surface, (like posters) you have to account for your photo to wrap around the sides of the canvas. That big outer frame in the preview (shown with your photo at about 30% opacity) is the part of your photo that will wrap around the edges or be trimmed away.
- Never leave important parts of your photo to the margins (lighter) preview area: Anything displayed there will be wrapped around the sides of the canvas, and likely be wrapped around the sides.
- Never leave white space in the margins of the preview area. If you do, you’ll likely get white space on the side(s) of your canvas! A number of negative reviews describe these white bands, and they are easily preventable!
- If you see a small exclamation point / warning icon under your image in preview, click on it for a message. Most likely Vistaprint is telling you your image is not high enough resolution, and may print blurry, especially at the larger canvas sizes.
By clicking on the image, you’ll get a few simple design tools like crop, move, and rotate.
Final preview of your Canvas:
You’ll once again notice the glaring reason that angry people go online writing bad reviews for Vistaprint’s canvas: you can’t see the sides on the final preview. Also, even when you click “view larger” it’s hard to see minute details, or whether your image could be blurry. (resolution too small)
At this point you should see a discounted price from the coupon
Without the use of a promo code or discount, Vistaprint’s canvases are relatively expensive. Companies like Shutterfly (get promo codes) and Snapfish (get promo codes here) and even art to frames (get coupons) have raised the bar on canvas quality, and the prices have really come down. The retail price of my 16×24″ canvas is $93, which is too expensive.
After applying a 20% off + free shipping promotion, the cost comes down to about $75, which is more competitive.
#3. Review: My canvas Shipped in 8 days, and looks really good!
As mentioned, the bar has been raised for custom-printed canvas online, so no major brands are printing poor quality. I notice that the photo is about a quarter-inch or so off-center from the preview, which doesn’t matter for my landscape photo of the California coast. This might be an issue if you rely on text or people’s heads being near the edges of the canvas. Give yourself a little extra room to the edge so that you have everything important with at least an inch or two of margin around the sides.
Print quality: The quality of the photo is really sharp! The colors look really vibrant, too. I uploaded my photo at 300 dpi, which means that the largest dimension of my file was a massive 7200 pixels wide! That’s a lot bigger than any Facebook or Instagram images, so be careful importing from there.
- Related: Vistaprint Masks Review, Cost
- 3 great sites to print art on canvas – goodhousekeeping.com
The canvas is wrapped around sides neatly and stapled for ‘a no frame’ look, which looks good on the wall. It also saves you from having to buy a nice 16×24″ frame for your print. The images are printed “full bleed,” which means that unless something went wrong during the design phase, you’ll see no white area at the edges.
Conclusion: Vistaprint is good, but not the best for printing on canvas
At the end of the day, I recommend Easy Canvas Prints (review, coupons) for the best combination of price & quality for custom printed canvas. Remember, just like Vistaprint, you should always use a coupon!
Tip: If you are not happy with your canvas for any reason, write an honest & helpful, negative review on vistaprint.com, and they will likely credit your account with the purchase amount. Hopefully this is not the case, as Vistaprint has adjusted their online design process to fix the white space issue that was creating problems and garnering poor reviews.
[yasr_overall_rating] – Review by Kevin M.
Ready to Print Your Photo on Canvas? Design Ideas & Inspiration
Here are some neat canvas design ideas on pinterest including designing a collage of canvas prints, as well as some nice black and white inspiration for canvas from Shutterfly.