The big picture: murals on Glasgow tenements

Why gable ends became canvases

Glasgow's mural scene has been growing for more than a decade, and increasingly factors are being asked whether owners should say yes when an artist, a council programme or a commercial backer comes knocking. The honest answer is it depends — and what it depends on is worth understanding before the scaffolding goes up.

Tenement gable ends are an accident of urban form. When a Victorian terrace was demolished or a road cut through, the surviving block was left with a blank stone or render flank facing a car park, a green or a new street. The wall isn't structural in the same load-bearing way as the facade, the windows are gone, and the view is usually unbroken.

Glasgow City Council and the City Centre Mural Fund saw the opportunity early: a single wall can change how an entire street is perceived. The Glasgow Mural Trail now stitches together more than thirty works, and a short train ride away the Paisley Mural Trail has done something comparable for the town centre. The economic logic is simple — bare wall plus paint equals visitor footfall — but the building-level logic is more interesting, because the mural rarely lands on a wall that's actually ready for it.

The pros: repairs, value and a community lift

A well-managed mural project does three things at once for the owners of the host building, and each of them is worth more than it looks from street level.

1. The wall gets fixed before the paint goes on

A serious mural commission means a serious survey. Failed pointing, blown render, parapet cracking, missing flashings and damp ingress all get found because no artist — and no insurer — will sign off on a 200-square-metre artwork applied to a wall that's actively shedding water. The repair is paid for either by the commissioning programme, the artist's funders, or shared between them and the owners. Either way, the gable goes from known problem we keep deferring to recently surveyed, repaired and weatherproofed. That's a tangible building benefit before the brushwork starts.

2. Property value and lettings interest tend to lift

The evidence is patchy but consistent: properties on or adjacent to well-executed murals report stronger lettings demand, faster sale times and a small premium on like-for-like comparables. The effect is not the mural itself, but what the artweork signals: that the building is cared for, that the council and the community noticed it, and that the neighbourhood is on a positive trajectory. The same instinct that puts a coffee shop on a corner puts a buyer in a flat above one.

3. Community and reputational benefits — tangible and intangible

The tangible side is documented: increased footfall, lower reported anti-social behaviour in the immediate area (graffiti tends to respect existing artwork), and a measurable increase in spending along trail routes. The intangible side is harder to measure but easier to feel: residents take visiting family to see the wall, local schools work it into art lessons, photographers and Instagram do the rest, and the building becomes a small civic landmark rather than a brick rectangle. Owners who initially resisted the project often become strong advocates within a year.

The cons: maintenance debt and disguised advertising

The case against isn't really against murals — it's against the wrong mural on the wrong wall under the wrong agreement. Three issues come up repeatedly.

1. Murals create maintenance the owners now own

Paint on stone or render has a lifespan, and that lifespan is shorter than the wall it sits on. UV bleaching, graffiti tagging, water tracking down from a failed flashing — all of it will degrade the artwork within 5–15 years depending on materials, aspect and weather. When that happens, the owners now own a fading mural rather than a clean wall, and the question of who pays to restore, repaint or remove it can be awkward. The original commissioning programme is usually long gone. If possible, a maintennace budget or end-game plan should be included in the original proposal.

2. The "disguised advert" problem

Several murals in Glasgow and elsewhere have been commercially backed: a brand, a retailer or a service company paying for the artwork on the condition that the imagery, the colour palette or a subtle logo references their product. Residents have benefited from those payments in the past, sometimes substantially, but the practice is increasingly discouraged by councils and by the artists' community. The criticism is straightforward: a public artwork that doubles as an unconsented advertisement on a residential block sits uncomfortably with planning policy, with the spirit of conservation areas, and often with the residents who weren't told what the brief actually was. Owners considering a commercially-backed commission should read the contract carefully and check what is allowed under any granted permissions.

3. Consent across all owners is harder than it sounds

In a typical Glasgow tenement, the gable wall is common property — every owner has a stake in what happens to it. The artist's brief may be signed off by the commissioning body, but the legal requirement to obtain resident consent often gets glossed over until objections arrive, sometimes years later. The factor's role here isn't to block projects; it's to make sure the agreement, the maintenance liability and the future-removal clause are all in writing before any wall is touched.

Edinburgh: a quieter scene, with notable exceptions

The mural conversation is overwhelmingly a Glasgow and Paisley one. Edinburgh has a smaller, more dispersed scene, and the city's strong heritage protections — particularly across the World Heritage Site of the Old and New Towns — have kept gable-end commissioning much rarer. Where Edinburgh has murals, they tend to cluster in Leith, where the LeithLate festival and a number of independent commissions have built up a quieter portfolio of works on commercial gables and warehouse flanks rather than residential tenements.

The most discussed Edinburgh piece in recent years is the Frederick Douglass mural in Polwarth, marking the abolitionist's time in Edinburgh — well executed, meaningful, and a useful illustration of what mural commissioning looks like when the brief is civic rather than commercial. Worth knowing if you're an Edinburgh resident looking at the viability of a tenement artwork: yes, they do exist, but are rarer, more carefully consented, and almost always non-commercial in tone.

What owners and factors should agree before anyone paints

The mural can be transformative. The paperwork around it is rarely transformative — but it's what decides whether the building is better off in ten years' time.

At minimum, get clarity in writing on six things: who is paying for the pre-paint survey and repairs; who owns the artwork once it's finished; who pays to restore or remove it when it degrades; whether any commercial sponsor has rights over the imagery; how owner consent is being obtained and recorded; and what happens if a future buyer of one of the flats objects.

Done properly, a mural project is one of the rare situations where art, repair budgets and community benefit all push in the same direction. Done sloppily, it leaves the owners with a fading painted advertisement on a wall they're now obliged to maintain forever. The difference is almost always in the agreement that nobody wanted to read.

If you're a tenement owner being approached about a mural — or thinking of proposing one — 7days.property can help you work through the agreement and the repair scope before any decision is taken. Get in touch and we'll walk it through with you.