Vehicle graphics for Seattle work vehicles
Door lettering, partial graphics and full fleet wraps for the contractors, trades and service fleets working Capitol Hill, Fremont, Ballard and South Lake Union. Designed with you, printed by our large-format partner, installed at our Kent shop about 30 minutes south of downtown.
How much of the vehicle should carry your brand?
Almost every commercial graphics conversation is really this question. Pick a tier below and the van updates to show what that coverage actually looks like, with a straight answer on who each one suits and what drives the price. There is no wrong tier, only a mismatch between the coverage and the job the vehicle has to do.
Door lettering and logos
- What it is
- Cut vinyl in solid colors: company name, phone number, website, license or DOT numbers, a logo on each front door and usually the rear doors or tailgate.
- Who it suits
- Owner-operators and small crews who need to be findable, readable and obviously legitimate when the van is parked on a Capitol Hill side street.
- What drives the price
- Quoted per vehicle. Covered area, the number of colors and how many vehicles you are doing move the number more than anything else.
- Honest note
- This is where most single-van contractors should start. It reads cleanly from the sidewalk, it is the least expensive tier by a wide margin, and it comes off without touching the paint when the truck sells.
Partial commercial wrap
- What it is
- Printed and laminated graphics across part of the body, most often the lower two thirds and the rear quarters, with cut lettering above it.
- Who it suits
- Service fleets that want to look like an established company without committing a full wrap budget to every vehicle in the yard.
- What drives the price
- Quoted by covered area. It lands between our published single-panel accent prices and a full wrap.
- Honest note
- A partial done properly beats a full wrap done cheap. Covering the lower body also puts printed film exactly where road spray hits hardest, which is the part of a Seattle van that looks tired first anyway.
Full fleet wrap
- What it is
- Printed and laminated film across every painted panel, with edges hand trimmed and tucked so nothing catches a pressure washer or a jacket zipper.
- Who it suits
- Fleets where every vehicle is a brand asset, and designs that use photography, gradients or a full body color you will not find in a stock vinyl.
- What drives the price
- Full wraps average $4,500 on a sedan or coupe, $5,300 on an SUV or truck, and $6,000 on a van or large vehicle. Averages vary by vehicle.
- Honest note
- This is also the only tier that puts film over the whole vehicle, so the paint underneath is shielded from road grit for the life of the wrap. That matters on a leased van and again at resale.
The illustration is a drawing, not a proof. Before anything is cut or printed you get a layout on your actual vehicle template, at real scale, with the type sized the way it will sit on the door.
What a Seattle work vehicle actually goes through
A branded van in Seattle does three separate jobs in a day. It drives, it parks, and it sits. The driving is the least interesting part, because nobody reads a phone number at 60 mph on I-5. Parking is where graphics earn their money, and Seattle parking is a specific kind of hard. Your van is nosed into a Capitol Hill side street with a couple of feet of clearance on either side. It is in a South Lake Union loading zone with the passenger side pinned against a curb full of people. It is backed into a Ballard alley where the rear doors are the only surface anyone will ever see. That geometry is the real design brief: which panels will somebody actually be standing next to while your crew is inside working.
It also decides where the money goes. On a van that lives in loading zones, the passenger side and the rear doors do the work and the driver side faces traffic. On a Fremont contractor truck that parks nose-in at every job, the tailgate is prime and the hood is close to worthless. We would rather put a heavier design on two surfaces that get seen than spread a thin one across six that do not.
Then there is the weather. Nine months of damp, a road film that never quite dries, and wheel spray that coats the lower third of a vehicle within a week of a fresh install. Graphics live in that. Printed work goes out laminated, and cut lettering is outdoor-rated film chosen for the surface it is landing on, so five to seven years of service is the realistic expectation here and more than that on a vehicle somebody actually washes by hand. The rain is not what takes years off it. Brush washes are, because a spinning brush finds the edge of a printed panel and the corner of every letter and keeps working at it. If you take one maintenance instruction from this page, make it that one.
Fleet owners carry a fourth problem: consistency and downtime. Vehicle six has to match vehicle one, including the three-year-old van still wearing the old layout, and none of them can sit in a shop for a week. We keep your design files so a reorder or a new vehicle prints from the same artwork with the same colors, and we stage installs a vehicle or two at a time so the crews keep working. Kent is about 30 minutes from downtown on I-5 or Highway 167, the same run our Seattle color change and paint protection customers make, so cycling one van at a time down the valley is a manageable rhythm rather than a lost week.
Cut vinyl, printed graphics, and the files we need from you
Two different products get called vehicle graphics, and knowing which one you are buying makes the quote make sense. Cut vinyl is solid-color film cut to the shape of your artwork: a name, a phone number, a website, a license or DOT number, a logo. It is the cleanest way to set type on a vehicle, it handles flat and gently curved panels beautifully, and it is genuinely what most trades need. Printed graphics are full-color artwork printed onto wrap film, laminated for UV and abrasion, and then installed panel by panel. Photography, gradients, detailed logos and anything covering a large area has to be printed. Printing goes to our large-format print partner; every install is done in house at Kent by the same team behind our color change work.
On artwork, the short version is that vector files save everyone time. Vector art with the fonts converted to outlines and your brand colors specified rather than guessed at can go straight to production. If your logo only exists as a small image pulled off a website, say so at the quote stage rather than the install stage, because it will need to be rebuilt before it can print two feet wide on a box side without going soft. If you have no usable artwork at all, we lay the design out with you. Either way, the last step before anything is cut or printed is your sign-off on a layout drawn over the template for your exact make, model and body style, at real scale, with the type sized the way it will actually sit on the door.
Removal is the part people underestimate, and it is the reason vinyl beats paint for anything commercial. Professionally installed film comes off factory paint without damage, and the paint underneath usually looks better than the paint around it, because the film absorbed several Washington winters of grit instead. That matters twice: when a leased vehicle goes back at the end of its term, and when you rebrand and want the fleet re-lettered rather than repainted. We also strip old graphics off vehicles we did not letter in the first place, which is normally step one of any rebrand.
Honest numbers before you pick up the phone
We do not publish a per-letter rate, because nobody in this trade can quote lettering off a price list without knowing the vehicle, the covered area and the color count. What we can give you are the real anchors we work from, so you know roughly which conversation you are walking into.
| Coverage | What it covers | SeaWraps pricing |
|---|---|---|
| Lettering | Cut vinyl name, phone, website, license and DOT numbers, door logos | Quoted per vehicle. Area, color count and fleet size set the number |
| Single panels | One painted panel in vinyl, useful as an anchor for small graphic work | Hood $250, roof $350, mirrors $200, wheel faces $500 |
| Partial wrap | Printed graphics over part of the body, usually lower two thirds and rear | Quoted by covered area, between single panels and a full wrap |
| Full wrap | Printed and laminated film across every painted panel | Sedan or coupe $4,500, SUV or truck $5,300, van or large vehicle $6,000 |
Those full wrap figures are averages and they move with the vehicle. A high-roof Sprinter with deep body ribs is a different day of work from a Transit Connect, and box trucks and trailers are quoted by surface area instead. Fleet projects are priced as a program rather than one vehicle at a time, and the rate scales as the vehicle count grows. The consumer-side breakdown of those same wrap numbers lives on our wrap cost guide.
Seattle vehicle graphics questions, answered straight
How much do vehicle graphics cost for a Seattle business?
Door lettering and logo packages are quoted per vehicle, because covered area, color count and fleet size drive the price far more than any per-letter rate would. Full wraps average $4,500 on a sedan or coupe, $5,300 on an SUV or truck and $6,000 on a van or large vehicle. Partial coverage is quoted by area and sits between the two. Our wrap cost guide breaks the full wrap numbers down further.
Do you install at my Seattle location or do I bring the vehicle to Kent?
Installs happen at our Kent shop at 8620 S 228th St, about 30 minutes from downtown Seattle on I-5 or Highway 167. Vinyl needs controlled temperature and a clean, dust-free environment to go on right, which a jobsite parking lot cannot give it. For fleets we stage the work a vehicle or two at a time so your crews are never all off the road at once.
Will vinyl graphics damage my van when they come off?
Professionally installed vinyl removes from factory paint without damage, and the paint underneath usually comes off better than the paint around it because the film took years of road grit instead. We also remove old graphics from vehicles we did not letter in the first place, which is the normal first step of a rebrand.
Do I need a full wrap or is door lettering enough?
For most trades running one or two vans, lettering is enough: a name, a phone number and a license number on the doors does the job when the vehicle is parked next to the people who might hire you. Move up to partial or full coverage when the design needs photography, gradients or a body color you cannot get in cut vinyl, or when the fleet is large enough that consistency is the point. We will tell you honestly which tier your project needs.
Do you design the graphics or do I supply the artwork?
Either works. Vector art with the fonts converted to outlines and your brand colors specified is ideal, and we can work straight from it. If your logo only exists as a small web image, tell us early so it can be rebuilt before it prints large. If you have no usable artwork at all, we lay the design out with you. Nothing gets cut or printed until you have signed off on a layout drawn over the template for your exact make, model and body style. Printing goes to our large-format print partner; every install is done in house.
How long do vehicle graphics last in Seattle weather?
Plan on five to seven years out of laminated printed work and outdoor-rated cut vinyl in this climate, and longer again if the vehicle gets hand washed. The damp is not what kills graphics. Brush car washes are, because a spinning brush finds every printed edge and every corner of a letter and works at it. Hand wash a branded van and the lettering will still be crisp on the day you change the branding.