After moving into a larger family home, I found myself able to reinstate the man cave. After decorating the walls, building my desk and chair for my console, and assembling some display cases for all my gaming memorabilia, it was time to turn my attention to what to hang on the walls. I’ve plenty of posters, but I wanted something a bit different. Something unique that suited my place of sanctuary.

While searching the Internet I came across Displate – artwork from over 1,000 artists that is printed onto metal sheets. After looking through the various collections I chose five plates from the Gaming Characters collection, by Eden Design. There are 31 designs in the collection – I picked Crysis’ Nomad, Halo’s Master Chief, Agent 47 from Hitman, Lara Croft and Portal’s GLaDOS – their awesome style was a perfect fit for my man cave.

Each plate is £33, which may seem a tad expensive, but the plates don’t need framing and each one comes with a magnet to fix it to the wall. The FAQs warn that attaching the adhesive magnets to wallpaper is not ideal, but I really wanted these to go on my worn brick feature wall so I decided to mount a small wood square to the wall with screws and raw plugs. I then attached the magnets to them rather than risk the weight of the plates causing a tear in my paper. Once the magnets are in place, the plates can be swapped around easily, perfect if you’re indecisive.

The plates arrived via DHL; each was well packed and protected in plastic wrapping, but that didn’t stop two of them from having some minor damage – maybe it was from how the ink dried. Luckily it’s only noticeable close up and doesn’t spoil the plates so I didn’t feel the need to ask Displate to fix them. No doubt the paint could scratch off if you’re not careful, the metal also holds fingerprints so handle each one with care if you want to keep them in tiptop condition.

It’s a shame the plates don’t come in bigger sizes, although if they did it could be an issue with the weight of each one. At 45cm (17,7″) x 32cm (12,6″) each piece weighs 0.9 kg. (2 lbs). Once you have a few up, the size is perfect.

ManCave

Minus a slight scuff in the paint, the five Displates I have chosen finish off my room perfectly, their uniqueness gets comments from those visiting, as do my bright lime green walls…

For 20% off your order, enter ‘summertime’ when prompted and get free shipping if you purchase three or more plates. For every plate you purchase, Displate will plant 10 trees.