Which wall map do I need?

Map Studio publishes sixty wall maps. They differ in one thing above all — scale, which is how much ground the sheet covers and therefore how much detail it can carry. Get the scale right and the rest follows.

A quick rule: 1:25 000 names individual streets. 1:100 000 names suburbs. 1:600 000 names towns. 1:5 000 000 names countries. The larger the second number, the more ground you get and the less detail.

Every sheet below is laminated, and sold two ways. Ready to hang is the map with a plastic batten fixed top and bottom, which keeps a large sheet flat and hanging straight — worth it on anything much over a metre and a half. Laminated sheet is the same map without the battens. Scales, editions and sheet sizes are taken from the printed maps themselves.

Street level — you need individual street names

Scales of 1:20 000 and 1:25 000. Streets are named, one-way starts and ends are shown, and hospitals with a casualty unit are distinguished from those without. This is the range for delivery, dispatch, emergency services and anyone whose work happens at an address.

Regional — bigger than a city, smaller than a province

Scales of 1:60 000 to 1:100 000. Suburb names and boundaries across a whole metro, with the major roads named but not the side streets. The range for sales territories and service areas that span more than one town.

Provincial — one province, on A0

Scales of 1:275 000 to 1:1 200 000, drawn as close in as an A0 sheet allows for the size of the province. Municipal boundaries are drawn and the municipalities named, with distances in kilometres printed between towns.

South Africa — the whole country on one sheet

National and thematic sheets. Choose by what you need on top of the roads: municipal areas, mineral deposits, grain silos, or a clean political or physical picture for a classroom.

Africa — the continent and its regions

Continental and regional sheets. The Executive Political is the road-and-border map; the two Businessman's sheets are the mining and logistics maps; the Commercial is the reference sheet. The SADC and Southern Africa sheets cover the region at 1:3 000 000, and East Africa puts Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi on one sheet at 1:1 000 000.

African countries — one country per sheet

Single-country sheets for offices, classrooms and anyone working across the border. The political sheets carry roads split tarred and untarred, with distances printed on the road where the scale allows; the physical and educational sheets are drawn in relief for the classroom wall.

World

From an A0 sheet that fits a normal office wall to a 2.37-metre sheet that anchors a boardroom. The two Equal Earth sheets draw every country at its true relative size — the kind of equal-area projection the UN's Correct the Map resolution encourages for classrooms.

Rest of the world

Single-region sheets beyond Africa. The Middle East sheet gives full country coverage of the Gulf states, Iran, Iraq, the Levant and Egypt, with disputed boundaries shown as disputed. The USA sheet grades the road network from Interstates down and carries Alaska and Hawaii as insets. The Europe sheet is a political and road map at 1:3 275 000, with E route numbers carried across the continent.

Still not sure?

Two questions settle most of it. What is the smallest thing you need to find on the map? If it is a street address, you need a city sheet. If it is a town, a provincial sheet will do. How much wall have you got? The sizes above are the printed sheet dimensions — measure first, and remember the battens on a ready-to-hang sheet add nothing to the width but make a large sheet far easier to live with.

If none of the sixty is quite right, we make custom maps: your sales regions, trading areas, radii from a depot, your branding on any sheet in the range. See custom mapping, or call +27 79 462 5260.