Our Newest Range of Blackboards

At Moores, we are very excited to announce our latest range of blackboards now available to buy online.

The Scribble Range is perfect for kids and adults alike – great for brightening up your home and making the place a little more fun!

The alphabet scribble board is perfect for younger children – perhaps you could use it to distract them while waiting for their dinner or as a fun educational tool. The board can either be hung on the wall or used around the house depending on how you prefer.

The fairy or football boards are great for kids’ bedrooms where they can either plan out their football team’s strategy or create stories.

If you’re looking for a blackboard for your bakery or café, then the gingerbread blackboard could be ideal – great for displaying your daily menu, special offers or announcements.

All the Scribble blackboards can be easily cleaned to be used over and over again and are all priced at £9.99 including VAT.

Visit our website for more information: www.boards4u.co.uk

How to use whiteboards in the home

More and more people are beginning to use blackboards and pin boards in their homes, but what about the whiteboard? Whiteboards are more commonly associated with schools and colleges but they are equally as useful and twice as stylish when used at home. Here are some of our favourite home decorating ideas with whiteboards.

Whiteboards for the kitchen

Whiteboards come in handy in the kitchen. Blackboards are probably the most popular types of notice board when it comes to the kitchen especially since the rise of country-chic and retro styles, but whiteboards are more effective in a modern kitchen. A magnetic whiteboard acts in a similar way to your fridge and gives you a place to pin-up receipts, notes and things you need to keep track of, but you can also draw on them. For example you might like to write a handy note to say ‘pay this on Tuesday’ for a bill that needs paying, or a reminder to your kids to take reply slips back in to school.

With your kitchen whiteboard you can also write out recipes and shopping lists so that you don’t forget them – I always find it’s best to write them down while you’re still in the kitchen!

Whiteboards for kids

Younger children will really benefit from having a whiteboard in the house or in their bedroom. Whiteboards are a safe and cost effective way for your kids to be creative. Drawing on paper means buying printed colouring books or reams of paper and while there is a place for this, sometimes it’s nice for your kids to be able to draw something, wipe it away and start again on something new. They can also use the whiteboard to make-believe at being teacher!

Older kids can also enjoy a whiteboard in their bedroom whether it be to help with their homework or simply pin-up pictures of their friends and the latest crazes. Whiteboards don’t have to be white either! There are a great range of coloured dry-wipe boards that will suit any teenager’s room.

Whiteboards for home office

Finally, whiteboards are of course ideal for your home office or study. If you work from home or if you have a study area for older children to work in then a whiteboard is incredibly handy. Running a business from home can be tricky but a whiteboard will help to make the space feel more professional and give you an area to write out or pin up important notices and targets. You can also buy  notice boards that are half dry-wipe and half cork board – these are particularly popular in offices.

As you can see, whiteboards definitely have a place in the home. Why not see how a whiteboard could benefit your household?

Choosing the best whiteboard for you

As a child you might have been used to seeing most classrooms having a chalkboard at the front of the room for the teacher to write on. However the discovery that the dust that chalk created was particularly bad for computers resulted in a change. As computers made their way into the classroom, chalkboards were slowly replaced by whiteboards or dry erase boards.

Whiteboards come with different surfaces that you can choose between. These include porcelain, high-pressure laminate and melamine. If you buy a whiteboard with a porcelain surface it is likely to come with some form of warranty as they are extremely durable and it is often the first choice for anyone looking for a board for a classroom or the office. You can even fasten magnets to it as the surface is enamelled sheet metal, which will allow you to use the board as a noticeboard at the same time. The surface is also non porous, which means it can stand exposure to stronger types of cleaning material.

A new addition to the range of whiteboard materials is the high-pressure laminate. It is created in the same way as the laminate that is used for kitchen counter tops. Although the boards are durable they are easy to scratch. This is not as convenient if you are looking to use the board in a classroom where children are likely to play with it, and the surface is not made of metal however and you can therefore not fasten magnets to it. However it is a lot cheaper than a board made out of porcelain.

Lastly there are the boards that are made out of melamine. This is normally used for smaller boards such as those used next to a desk or for the children to draw on in their rooms. These boards are not as sturdy as those above and will require thorough cleaning as ink or similar material is likely to seep into the pours of the board. This can leave a grey surface or in worse cases make the board impossible to clean completely.

There are many options available whether you want a large or smaller sized whiteboard, and you can find one with pretty much any colour frame that you would like, and that will suit your space. Just make sure that you ask how to best clean and maintain your whiteboards so that you can enjoy them in many years to come.

The best boards to show off your menu

Blackboards and noticeboards are common place in restaurants, pubs and cafes and have been for many years. Competition in the hospitality industry is fierce with every business owner wanting to retain and gain more customers than the next. One way to make your establishment stand out from the crowd is with a stunning menu, and what better way to show it off than with a restaurant menu board.

At Moores, we have been making blackboards for decades but it is only more recently that we have expanded into the printed blackboards business. You might like to go for a more generic menu board as pictured here to show off your ‘specials’, wine list or dessert menu. These style boards are great for pubs, rustic restaurants and funky bistros. Your menu can be changed as often as you like – just be sure to get a good sign writer in if you’re not the arty type as there is nothing worse than a badly drawn blackboard!

Many restaurants actually prefer to get their own custom made blackboard designed. You get something subtle with your logo printed stylishly at the top or in the bottom corners, or you could go the whole hog and get something really ‘out there’ made for you. For example if you run a sea food restaurant, you could get a blackboard in the shape of a crab made up! You could even experiment with different colour boards and maybe even clashing colours for a really funky design.

In addition to wall blackboards, table-top blackboards are fantastic for up-selling to customers. Your coffee list, starter menu or details of any special offers can just sit on their tables tempting them in to stay longer (and spend more money of course!). Tabletop blackboards come in a great range of sizes and colours to suit any style of restaurant, pub or café and again they can be printed with your logo or any writing that you require.

No establishment is complete without showing off their menu and for many the blackboard is a simple, cost effective and stylish way to do this. Why not take a look at our website www.boards4u.co.uk to see the restaurant menu boards we have on offer.

Happy Birthday Moores Message Boards!

At Moores Message Boards this month it’s not just our birthday, but our 35th birthday! Yes, 35 years ago this month Moores of Stalham as it was known then opened its doors and started manufacturing notice boards. It wasn’t until a few years down the line that we noticed that our range of blackboards were becoming ever popular and since then we have turned most of our attention that way, manufacturing  thousands of blackboards every year.

One of our most exciting moments in our history came in 2005 where we were the first to develop the Sudoku magnetic notice board. This product was so successful that demand soon exceeded supply and our team far exceeded expectations to get everything delivered at Christmas.

In 2007 we re-launched as Moores Message Boards and haven’t looked back since.

As a UK based company, we have seen the demise of many fantastic British manufacturers, factories and workshops as more and more work is outsourced to developing countries. But we are proud to support local workers and continue to process new business orders every day.

So from everyone at Moores, thank you for supporting us over the past 35 years, and here’s to the next 35!

Blackboards or whiteboards for schools?

Many teachers prefer to stick to their tradition and use a blackboard for leading their classes but is this a mind-set that is shared around the UK? This post will look at the advantages of both whiteboards and blackboards.

Blackboards have been used for teaching in classrooms since the early 1900s when a geography teacher in Scotland took his students’ slates and attached them to the classroom wall in order to display the lesson to the class. Since then, a blackboard has been a common association with the classroom as a brilliant way to display information and then simply rub it out at the end of the lesson.

Blackboards can come in a variety of shapes and sizes from small wall blackboards to those on a roll so the entire days’ lessons can be written out and those with pre-drawn lines on that are great for teaching children to read and write. Most classrooms opted for a large wall blackboard which meant that writing didn’t need to be squeezed in. However, many people find writing with chalks very difficult especially as the chalks are used and get smaller.

The main advantage of a whiteboard for teaching over a blackboard is that there is far less mess involved. Chalk gets everywhere and even if you use liquid chalks instead there is still the risk of it getting on your clothes which can be tricky to remove. Blackboard dusters can also create a lot of mess in themselves and the dust can cause some people to cough especially those who are asthmatic. Whiteboard markers are very clean and most can be easily washed out of clothes.

Many people also argue that using a black whiteboard pen on a whiteboard is easier to read than white chalk on a blackboard. You can buy a range of coloured pens for whiteboards that can come in very handy for highlighting important points and drawing diagrams too. Chalkboards are slightly more limited in the things that you can display on them. Magnetic whiteboards are particularly useful in lessons for sticking up pictures and graphs.

Overall, the whiteboard is a much more useful and easy to use tool for teaching in schools, universities and colleges. As time progresses, we predict that fewer and fewer blackboards will be seen in classrooms, especially with the development of interactive whiteboards.

Is there still a place for the blackboard?

In schools around the world, blackboards have been slowly replaced for some time now with whiteboards. Whiteboards are considered to be less messy, more robust and easier for students to read. Many universities and modern schools have invested in interactive whiteboards. These enable the teacher to display images, lessons and games on the board from a computer that can be controlled from the whiteboard.

So is there still a place in the world for the blackboard? While blackboards may not be as popular nowadays in schools, they have become increasingly popular in the home. With the rise of brands such as Shabby Chic and country-style and vintage becoming popular style trends, blackboards have actually made a come-back! It might be a small wall hanging blackboard in the kitchen, or even an entire chalkboard wall – either way the style is coming back. Magnetic blackboards are one of the most popular products at present, finding a good balance between chalkboard and notice board. You can buy or make fun magnetic to go with them that can brighten up your home and make leaving messages or reminders a little bit fun!

Kids will love having a blackboard at home. You can buy novelty blackboards in a variety of different shapes such as cats, dogs, bears or trains. These are great for helping them to express their creativity without wasting reams and reams of paper.

Even if blackboards are being used less in schools, pubs are still using the blackboard. See our article on pub blackboards for the range of options that are available. Studies have shown that people are more likely to pay attention to something on a blackboard or notice board because subconsciously we recognise that the information on it is likely to change on a regular basis. So to answer the question, yes there is still a place for the blackboard.

While schools and colleges might be moving on to more modern solutions to aid their teachers, homes and pubs across Britain are embracing the blackboard in new and more fun ways than ever before.