The Ultimate Guide to Hoarding Boards

If you’re carrying out a search online your eyes will be attracted to lots of various individual board pricing, with some companies promoting panels from just £68. Looks great, right? However, where the prices look initially the cheapest, when you look in more detail lots of what is required to achieve a robust and attractive end product has been stripped out. Here is a list of a number of things that have been proposed or are missing that could come back to bite you:

• Issue 1: It’s a Foamex hoarding board quoted, not Dibond. Foamex won’t stand up to impact like Dibond, so you will find yourself forever replacing the graphics. Another issue with Foamex is it soaks up moisture, so in wet months your panels will heavily belly.
• Issue 2: They have not included printed trims and colour-matched screws. If you really want the wow factor, then these little touches make a huge difference.
• Issue 3: A 0.12-skin Dibond panel has been proposed. A 0.12-skin panel is the cheapest grade of Dibond available. It will do a job, however due to the product featuring such a thin front aluminium skin you will find that in the hotter months these panels will expand far greater than, say, a 0.15-skin. To maximise quality always go for a thicker skin.
• Issue 4: The cost is for supply-only panels, so you need to consider a couple of missing elements to complete the work, like who’s carrying out the artworking, survey, and installation. At Lavastar when we cost a hoarding panel job we include all these elements.

Avoid, avoid, avoid Foamex at all costs (in our opinion). Some companies will push this to promote a cheap panel cost and encourage clicks into their website, however we care about how your hoarding panels will look over the coming years. Dibond is used by leading developers and can take a big hit without cracking. We would also suggest going with a thick-skin composite panel. Our standard entry skin is 0.15, however on the more high-end projects where clients want to minimise expansion in hot weather conditions we propose a 0.3 skin.

One thing we get asked for as part of the spec is that the client wants anti-graffiti laminate. Now official anti-graffiti laminate is about three times the cost of standard protective laminate that we use on 95% of our jobs, and we think this is an area you can really make a cost saving. Our advice would be:

• Use a standard protective laminate, as this will do a great job at protecting the print from damage and is a third of the cost of official anti-graffiti.
• Have Lavastar provide you with some graffiti removal spray so you have it to hand on site if your hoarding panels get damaged. We provide one bottle of this free of charge with any job and it’s excellent at removing damage.
• Keep the money you have saved by not using official anti-graffiti in a pot for if ever you need to fully replace panels due to the damage being extreme (in our 10 years of business this is very rare).

PS: We have found anti-graffiti laminate deteriorates faster over time than our normal laminates, especially if south facing.

1. Vinyl-wrapped edges – Your hoarding boards will naturally expand in heat, and if you have a lightly coloured creative the black edge of the panel can show and look a bit unsightly when looking down a long run of graphics. By wrapping the graphic around the panel edge this removes the issue.
2. Colour-matched screws – Ensure your potential customers’ eyes are drawn to the stunning graphics and NOT the ugly unmatched screws.
3. Survey – If you really want your creative to work with the shapes and gradients of the site hoarding we are fixing to, then having Lavastar carry out a survey prior to install can really make your hoarding graphics look perfectly tailored to fit. We carry out all our cuts on site to ensure we can really maximise the finish.

Need a fast quote or free detailed survey for your development? Call us now on 01252 850 818 or email over more information to info@lavastar.co.uk. We cover all major cities with our services including London, Manchester, Leeds, Liverpool and Birmingham.