Art from the street to the floor

Graffiti is loud, fast, colorful and full of attitude, and it has shaped the look of streetwear, album covers, sneakers and skate decks for half a century. A graffiti rug brings that energy indoors: fat bubble letters in candy colors, a tangled wildstyle piece full of arrows, drips and splatters of spray paint across black, a tagged brick wall or a subway car covered top to bottom. The most personal design of all is your own name, painted in street lettering. Every rug is printed edge to edge on soft velvet and goes in the washing machine, no paint thinner required.

Graffiti designs

Design	The look	Best in
Bubble letters	Fat, rounded throw-up letters with outlines	Teen rooms, kids' rooms
Wildstyle	Interlocking letters, arrows and sharp angles	Sneaker rooms, studios
Spray drips	Splatters and drips on black or white	Studios, game rooms
Brick wall	A wall covered in tags and stickers	Man caves, basements
Subway car	A painted train in full color	Hallways, as a long runner
Your name	Your own name or crew in street lettering	Bedrooms, barbershops, gifts

Where modern graffiti began

Modern graffiti writing started in Philadelphia in the late 1960s, where a teenager named Darryl McCray, known as Cornbread, is often credited as one of the first writers to make his name famous across a city. By the early 1970s it had exploded in New York. In 1971, The New York Times ran a story about a young messenger who wrote TAKI 183 on walls and subway stations all over Manhattan, and within a few years thousands of kids were writing their names, competing for fame with bigger, brighter and more complex letters. The city's subway trains became rolling galleries, carrying their work from one borough to another.

Graffiti around the world

From New York, graffiti spread across the globe and took on local accents. The western face of the Berlin Wall was covered in paint and slogans in the years before it fell in 1989, and pieces of it are now displayed in museums. São Paulo developed its own tall, angular lettering called pixação, and cities from London to Melbourne have famous laneways and walls where writers paint legally. A rug can carry that global spirit in a design of your own.

Tags, throw-ups and pieces

Graffiti has its own vocabulary. A tag is a writer's signature, quick and stylized. A throw-up is a fast, two-color piece of rounded bubble letters, usually just an outline and a fill. A piece, short for masterpiece, is a large, detailed, multicolored work with effects, highlights and backgrounds that can take hours. Wildstyle is the most complex form of all, with letters so twisted, interlocked and decorated with arrows that only other writers can read them.

Bubble letters

Fat, puffy bubble letters are the friendliest graffiti style, easy to read and full of color. A bubble-letter rug, spelling a name, a word or a few letters in candy pink, electric blue and lime green with a crisp black outline, is a fun choice for a kid's or a teen's bedroom. Our round rugs, from 2.6 to 5.9 ft (80 to 180 cm) across, make a great frame for a single bubble-letter initial.

Wildstyle

A wildstyle piece, sharp letters crashing into each other with arrows, connections and 3D shadows, is the most dramatic graffiti rug, a striking centerpiece for a sneaker room, a studio or a game room. Ours are original designs in the style, not copies of any writer's work.

Spray drips and splatters

Drips of paint running down a wall and splatters from a can are graffiti's texture. A drip rug, neon colors running across black or bold black splatters on white, is an abstract, energetic design that suits a studio, a teen room or a game room. It pairs well with a bold accent wall.

Hip-hop culture

Graffiti grew up alongside DJing, MCing and breakdancing in the Bronx of the 1970s, and together they're often called the four elements of hip-hop. That's why graffiti lettering still shows up on album covers, concert posters and streetwear. A graffiti rug is a natural fit for a room with a turntable and a wall of records. For more, see our vinyl record rugs.

From the street to the gallery

By the late 1970s and early 1980s, artists who started on the street were showing in galleries. Jean-Michel Basquiat first appeared spray-painting cryptic phrases under the tag SAMO with his friend Al Diaz, and Keith Haring drew thousands of chalk figures on the black paper of empty subway ad panels before becoming world famous. For designs inspired by their styles, see our Basquiat rugs and Keith Haring rugs.

Walls that made history

Some walls became legends. 5Pointz, a warehouse complex in Queens, was a graffiti mecca where writers from around the world painted for years, until it was whitewashed in 2013; in 2018, a federal judge awarded the artists $6.7 million under a law protecting visual art, a landmark decision for street artists. In Miami, the Wynwood Walls opened in 2009 and turned a warehouse district into an outdoor museum of murals.

Sneaker rooms and streetwear

Graffiti and sneakers go together. A wildstyle or drip rug in the middle of a sneaker room, framed by shelves of boxes, ties the whole display together. For more, see our sneaker rugs and hypebeast and streetwear rugs, and for art-toy style, our KAWS-inspired rugs.

Teen bedrooms

For a teenager, a rug with their name in graffiti letters is the ultimate personalized room piece. Pair it with a few posters, string lights and a bold accent wall. On a hard floor, choose Standard, 5 mm crushed velvet on a non-slip faux leather back, about 500 g/m², so the rug stays put. Our bedroom rugs page has more layouts.

Barbershops and studios

Barbershops, tattoo parlors, recording studios and skate shops love graffiti style. A rug with the shop's name in street lettering at the entrance, or a drip design under a chair, adds instant personality. Standard holds up best to busy foot traffic. Our office and studio rugs page has more ideas.

Gaming setups

Under a gaming desk, a neon drip or bubble-letter rug pairs perfectly with RGB lighting. Choose Standard under a rolling chair, in 3.3×5 or 4×6 ft, which stays put and lets the wheels roll.

Man caves and basements

A tagged brick-wall rug turns a basement or a man cave into an urban hideout. Pair it with an exposed brick wall or concrete floor, metal shelving and a neon sign. Our man cave rugs page has more ideas.

Hallways and subway cars

A long hallway is the perfect place for a painted subway car. A custom runner up to 10 ft long, with a train covered in color from end to end, gives a narrow space serious style. Choose Standard, which stays put as people walk by.

Kids' rooms

For younger children, bright bubble letters spelling their name, or a cheerful wall of colorful tags and smiley faces, is a fun, friendly take on street style. On a hard floor, choose Standard.

Pairing with furniture

Graffiti rugs look great with industrial and streetwear-inspired furniture: black metal shelving, a leather or vinyl sofa, concrete-look tables, milk crates for records and a few framed prints. Keep the walls plain or exposed brick so the rug carries the color, and pick one bright accent from it for cushions or a lamp.

Colors

Graffiti designs look best in bold, saturated colors with crisp black outlines: candy pink, electric blue, lime green, orange and chrome silver. For a calmer room, try black and white tags or a single color on grey concrete.

Related styles

For more bold street-inspired designs, see our psychedelic rugs and pop art rugs.

Gifts

A custom graffiti rug with someone's name is one of the most personal gifts we make, perfect for a teen's birthday, a new barbershop or a friend's first apartment.

Your own piece

Want your name, your crew or your shop in street lettering, or your own graffiti sketch printed big? Our custom rugs can print it in any size up to 5′11″ × 10′, or as a round rug. Please only send artwork you're allowed to use; photos of other writers' walls belong to them. Check spelling carefully, as custom rugs can't be returned.

Sizes, shipping and returns

Rectangles come in 2×3, 2.6×3.9, 3.3×5, 4×6 and 5×7 ft, and round rugs from 2.6 to 5.9 ft (80 to 180 cm) across. Custom sizes go up to 5′11″ × 10′, including long runners. Every rug is printed to order in 1–3 business days and ships from Turkey; US delivery usually takes 2–5 business days after that. Unused rugs can be returned within 30 days on US orders; custom rugs can't be returned.

Care

Machine wash on a gentle, cold cycle and let it air dry flat. Vacuum on a low setting between washes, and blot spills with cold water right away. The design is printed into the fibers, so the colors stay loud, wash after wash.

Caps, cans and the black book

Graffiti writers talk about their tools like painters talk about brushes. The cap, the nozzle on a spray can, changes everything: a skinny cap gives a fine line for outlines and details, while a fat cap sprays a wide band of color for fills. Writers swap caps between cans to get the line they want, and the sound of a can being shaken, the rattle of the mixing ball inside, is part of the culture.

Before a piece goes on a wall, it often starts in a black book, a writer's sketchbook full of letter studies, outlines and color tests. Black books are shared, signed and traded among crews, and many writers keep them for decades as a record of their style.

Those details inspire rugs that feel authentic. A page from a black book, with pencil sketches of letters, arrows and color notes around a half-finished piece, makes a cool design for a creative studio. A row of spray-can caps in different colors and shapes is a graphic nod only writers will fully read, and a single dripping can on a brick wall works as a bold centerpiece for a teen's room.

Pair these designs with exposed brick, metal shelving and a few framed sketches, and the room feels like a studio where the next piece is always being planned.

Padrift is an independent studio. Artists are named only to describe the street-art styles our designs are inspired by; we are not affiliated with, sponsored or endorsed by any artist or estate, and our rugs are not reproductions of their work.