Photo tiles suit a photo wall you plan to change: they stick to the wall without nails and move in seconds. Canvas prints suit a wall you want to keep: they scale up to 120×80cm and read as finished art. Tiles cost from £5, canvas from £4.50 — the real difference is commitment, not price.
Most of us have hundreds of good photos and none of them on a wall. The usual blocker is not choosing the pictures; it is choosing the format, because tiles and canvas ask for different things from you. One asks for nothing but a clean wall. The other asks for a nail and a decision you will live with.
This guide compares the two honestly — cost, hanging, wall damage, print quality and which rooms each suits — so you can settle it in one read.
The short version
Photo tiles are the flexible option.MIXPIX photo tiles are 20×20cm squares from £5 each that hang with a free magnetic Magnofix hanger — no nails, no drilling, repositionable in seconds.
Canvas prints are the committed option.Canvas prints run from £4.50 for a 20×20cm square to £60 for a 120×80cm statement piece, hand-stretched on a pine frame.
At small sizes, price is a near tie. A 20×20cm canvas is £4.50; a 20×20cm tile is £5. Money only becomes a factor when you scale up.
Hanging is the real divide. Tiles leave a rental wall exactly as they found it. Canvas needs a nail, and moving it later means a hole to fill.
One tip whichever you choose: lay the whole arrangement out on the floor first and photograph it. It is far easier to move pieces on the carpet than on the wall.
Why the choice matters more than it looks
A photo wall is the cheapest large-scale decorating decision you can make, and the one you look at most. Get the format wrong and you either live with a layout you cannot change, or you face a wall of holes when the tenancy ends — around a fifth of households in England rent privately, according to the government's English Housing Survey, and for renters the hanging method is not a detail, it is the decision.
The good news is that the two formats fail in opposite ways, which makes the choice easier than it looks. Tiles are hard to get wrong and easy to change. Canvas is harder to place and much harder to outgrow.
Photo tiles: what they do well, and where they struggle
A photo tile is a lightweight square print that sticks straight to the wall. MYPICTURE's version, MIXPIX, is a 20×20cm square, 1cm thick, printed on a rigid lightfoam core with a matt, glare-free surface. Each tile costs from £5 at Factory Price and comes with a free Magnofix hanger — a magnetic-plus-adhesive system, so once the wall strip is up you can lift, straighten and swap tiles by hand. You can order up to 25 in one go, with or without a printed frame, and they arrive in 5–8 working days. If you want the fuller background, we cover it in what photo tiles are.
Where tiles win: rented homes, staircases, halls, and any wall you expect to update. The matt surface also forgives a slightly soft phone photo in a way gloss never does.
Where tiles struggle: size and presence. A tile comes in one format, 20×20cm, so it cannot give you the single dominant image a large canvas can. Tiles also grip best on smooth, clean walls — heavily textured surfaces and freshly painted walls are harder work for the adhesive, so test one strip in a hidden spot first. And on pure entry price, we should concede that rivals discount aggressively: Snapfish was listing photo tiles from £3.99 when we checked in August 2026, below MYPICTURE's £5.
Canvas prints: what they do well, and where they struggle
A canvas print is your photo printed on textured canvas fabric and hand-stretched over a real pine wood frame — 2cm deep as standard, 4cm for large formats. MYPICTURE prints with solvent-free HP Latex inks, dispatches within 24 hours, and delivers in 4–7 working days. Sixteen formats run from a 20×20cm square at £4.50 up to 120×80cm at £60, with panoramic shapes from £23, five edge designs, and optional framed canvas prints with a floating gallery effect.
Where canvas wins: presence and permanence. The woven texture reads as art rather than a photograph, and only canvas gives you a genuine centrepiece — an 80×60cm or 100×75cm print above a sofa does a job no arrangement of 20×20cm squares can. It is also the better keepsake format: a stretched canvas is a finished object you can move house with.
Where canvas struggles: flexibility. Hanging means a nail (small formats take a sawtooth hanger; large ones hang on cord between D-rings), and rearranging means new holes. Care is light but real — an occasional wipe with a dry or barely damp cloth. And at the top end, we should be honest: if you want hand-finished museum framing, premium printers such as WhiteWall charge considerably more than MYPICTURE and deliver a more luxurious object. MYPICTURE's case is different — like-for-like quality at a fraction of the price, backed by a guarantee that beats any comparable UK offer by 5%.
Photo tiles vs canvas prints: side by side
Photo tiles (MIXPIX)
Canvas prints
Price from
£5 per tile
£4.50 (20×20cm)
Sizes
One: 20×20cm
Sixteen formats, 20×20cm to 120×80cm
Hanging
Free Magnofix magnetic hanger, no nails
Nail with sawtooth hanger or cord; hanger set optional
Wall damage
None — restickable and repositionable
Holes to fill if you move it
Weight
Featherlight 1cm lightfoam
Pine stretcher frame; heavier at size
Surface
Matt, glare-free
Woven canvas texture, painting-like
Rearranging
Seconds, by hand
Re-hang each time
Best for
Changing photo walls, rentals, stairs
Statement pieces, long-term walls
The table describes a division of labour rather than a winner. Tiles are furniture you can rearrange; canvas is architecture. Most good photo walls we see use the smaller format for volume and the larger one for focus.
Which costs less? A worked example
Take a six-photo wall, priced at MYPICTURE Factory Prices checked in August 2026.
Wall A — a six-square grid. Six MIXPIX tiles cost 6 × £5 = £30, plus £6 delivery under the £49 free-delivery threshold: £36 on the wall, zero holes. The same grid in six 20×20cm canvas prints costs 6 × £4.50 = £27, plus £6 delivery: £33 — and six nails. At this size the money is a wash; you are choosing between £3 and the holes.
Wall B — a statement mix. One 80×60cm canvas at £38 anchors the wall, with four tiles around it at £20. That order totals £58, so delivery is free: £58 all in. Tiles alone cannot build this wall, because nothing in the tile format goes bigger than 20×20cm — and a wall of canvas alone cannot be reshuffled next month.
Which suits your room — and your tenancy?
Hallways and staircases. Tiles. Drilling straight lines up a staircase wall is miserable work, and a staircase sweep of squares can grow one tile at a time as the photos accumulate.
Living room. Canvas for the main wall. A 60×40cm print suits the wall above an armchair or sideboard; above a three-seater sofa, go 80×60cm or 100×75cm from the large canvas prints range so the piece does not float in empty space.
Bedroom. Either works; a single wide canvas above the headboard is the classic move, with panoramic formats made for exactly that proportion.
A rented flat. Tiles, without much debate. The whole display comes down in ten minutes and the deposit never enters the conversation.
Kids' rooms and seasonal walls. Tiles, because the photos will not stay current for long and swapping a tile costs £5, not a rehang.
Print quality: what your photo actually needs
This is the part product pages rarely explain, so here is the printer's version. Sharp printing needs roughly 150 DPI at final size. A 20×20cm tile therefore needs only about 1,200 × 1,200 pixels — any phone photo from the last decade clears that, even cropped. A 60×40cm canvas needs around 3,500 × 2,400 pixels, which most recent phone main-camera shots manage. A 120×80cm canvas needs roughly 7,000 × 4,700 pixels, and that is beyond many phone originals — which is why the MYPICTURE upload check reads your file's resolution and only offers the sizes it can print well, rather than letting you order a blur.
Two working rules follow. First, the format forgives differently: a matt 20×20cm tile viewed at arm's length hides small flaws, and a large canvas viewed from across a room is gentler than you would expect, because viewing distance scales with size. Second, if one photo matters most, give it the resolution audit before you give it the big canvas.
Or use both: layouts that mix tiles and canvas
The strongest photo walls rarely pick a side. Three layouts that work:
Anchor and satellites. One 80×60cm canvas centred, with a loose constellation of tiles around it. The canvas holds the wall; the tiles carry the story.
The growing grid. Start a tile grid beside a fixed canvas and add a row each year. Because every tile is the same 20×20cm square, the grid never falls out of alignment.
The staircase sweep. Tiles stepping up the stairs, ending at a single canvas on the landing.
Keep gaps consistent — about 5cm reads clean — and match the treatment: frameless tiles sit best beside an unframed canvas. For fifty more arrangements, see our gallery wall ideas.
A three-question test to settle it
Will this wall look the same in a year? If yes, canvas. If the photos will rotate, tiles.
Are you allowed to make holes in the wall? If no — or if you would rather not — tiles, and the question is closed.
Do you want one photo to dominate the room? If yes, canvas at 60×40cm or larger. Tiles democratise; canvas editorialises.
Split answers are allowed, and common: one canvas for the photo that earned it, tiles for everything still auditioning.
Why Choose MYPICTURE Over Other UK Photo Printing Services?
MYPICTURE is the value option done properly: Factory Prices up to 85% below typical retail, production in Europe with solvent-free HP Latex inks, dispatch within 24 hours for canvas, and a Lowest Price Guarantee that beats any like-for-like UK online price by 5% — in effect, the comparison shopping is done for you. The figures below are scoped to what we verifiably win on; where a rival is better, the article above says so.
Buyer's guide
MYPICTURE
VistaPrint UK
PostSnap
Photo tiles from
£5.00 (20×20cm)
£6.99
£12.00
Canvas prints from
£4.50 (20×20cm)
£18.99
£22.00
Customer rating
4.93/5, 170,000+ reviews (Trusted Shops)
4.4/5, 31,008 reviews (Trustpilot)
4.8/5, 4045 reviews (Trustpilot)
Whichever side of the tiles-versus-canvas line your wall lands on, the same photos are behind it — upload once, and the price of trying is a £5 tile.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between a photo tile and a canvas print?
A photo tile is a lightweight 20×20cm square print on a rigid foam core that sticks to the wall without nails and can be repositioned at any time. A canvas print is your photo printed on woven canvas and stretched over a wooden frame, available in sizes up to 120×80cm, hung on a nail like traditional art. Tiles prioritise flexibility; canvas prioritises presence and permanence.
Are photo tiles worth it?
Yes, for the right wall. At £5 per tile with a free magnetic hanger, photo tiles are the cheapest damage-free way to fill a wall with your own photos, and the only format you can rearrange in seconds. They are worth less if you want a single large statement image, because tiles come in one 20×20cm size — that job belongs to canvas.
What is the alternative to Mixtiles in the UK?
MIXPIX from MYPICTURE is a UK-delivered alternative to Mixtiles. The idea is the same — your photos on light 20×20cm tiles that hang without nails — but MIXPIX tiles cost £5 each at Factory Price, hang on a magnetic Magnofix system so swapping takes seconds, and arrive in 5–8 working days with free UK delivery over £49.
Do photos printed on canvas look good?
A good photo printed on canvas looks like art rather than a snapshot: the woven texture adds depth, the matt surface avoids glare, and the wrapped edges finish the piece without a frame. The caveat is resolution — a large canvas needs a sharp original, which is why MYPICTURE's upload check only offers print sizes your photo can genuinely support.
Can you mix photo tiles and canvas prints on one wall?
Yes, and mixed walls are often the strongest layout. Use one canvas — 60×40cm or larger — as the anchor image, then arrange 20×20cm tiles around it for the supporting photos. Keep spacing consistent at around 5cm and the two formats read as one deliberate display, with the canvas providing focus and the tiles providing flexibility.
