A banner that's hung wrong looks worse than no banner at all. Sagging middle, puckered corners, one side an inch lower than the other. It happens because most of us treat it like a five-minute job with whatever screws are in the coffee can. Spend twenty minutes instead and it'll hang flat for years.
Here's how to do it right, wall by wall.
Know What You're Screwing Into
Concrete block. Most garages built before the 80s have block on at least one wall. You'll need a hammer drill and a masonry bit. Drill into the face of the block, not the mortar joint. Mortar is softer and easier, but it crumbles over time and your anchor works loose. Tapcons are the simplest option: drill the pilot hole, blow the dust out, drive the screw. For a lightweight vinyl banner you don't need sleeve anchors or anything heroic. Just don't skip blowing out the hole, because concrete dust packed in the bottom is the number one reason a Tapcon strips instead of biting.
Drywall. Find the studs. A banner weighs almost nothing, so you can get away with plastic anchors, but here's the thing nobody mentions: it's not about weight, it's about time. A drywall anchor under constant low tension will slowly egg out its hole, and six months later one corner has drooped a half inch. If you can hit a stud, hit a stud. If you can't, use toggle bolts or self-drilling metal anchors instead of the cheap plastic cone type.
Bare studs. This is the easiest wall to work with and the one that gives people the most trouble, because studs are 16 inches on center and your grommets almost certainly aren't. Don't try to make the banner fit the studs. Run a 1x2 furring strip horizontally across three or four studs, screw it in, and hang the banner off the strip. Now you can put a fastener anywhere you want. Same trick works on a metal building where you're stuck with purlin spacing.
Grommet Spacing and Keeping Vinyl Flat
Most banners have grommets every 18 to 24 inches along the top and bottom. Use all of them. People hang from the two top corners, the middle bellies out, and they blame the banner.
Skip the zip ties. Zip ties are rigid, they concentrate the load on one spot of the grommet, and every time the vinyl expands or contracts they pucker the edge. Use ball bungees instead. They're the little elastic loops with a plastic ball on the end, they cost about a quarter apiece, and they hold constant light tension so the banner pulls itself flat. If your wall has nothing to loop around, run a wire cable or a length of 1/2-inch EMT conduit across your mounting points and hook the bungees to that.
For anything wider than about four feet, running conduit through the top hem or zip-tied to every grommet is the cleanest look you can get. The rod carries the load evenly and the banner has nowhere to sag.
One more thing about vinyl: it moves with temperature. An unheated garage in July will let a banner relax a little, and in January it'll pull tight. Leave a hair of slack in the bungees so it has somewhere to go. And keep it out of direct sunlight from a window or open bay door if you can, because UV will pull the reds and yellows out of a print faster than anything else.
If you're still shopping for one, our garage banners collection is all built for this kind of hanging with proper grommet spacing already sorted.
Felt Is a Different Animal
Felt pennants and flags don't behave like vinyl. They crease, and once a crease sets in wool felt it's stubborn.
Never fold felt for storage. Roll it, printed side out, around a cardboard tube. If yours arrived folded, hang it up and give it a week. Gravity handles most of it. For what's left, hit it with a garment steamer held a few inches back, or a dry iron on low with a cotton cloth between the iron and the felt. Never put a hot iron directly on printed felt.
Don't stretch felt tight across grommets the way you would vinyl. It'll distort permanently. Felt wants to hang loose from the top edge only, or better, get mounted flat to a thin piece of plywood or foam board and hung as a panel.
Height, and Where the Workbench Fits
Standard workbench height is 36 inches. If your banner is going above a bench, keep the bottom edge at least 10 to 12 inches above the benchtop. You need clearance to set a carb down, and you don't want the corner catching on a bench grinder every time you walk past.
On an open wall, aim to put the vertical center of the banner around 60 inches off the floor. That's roughly standing eye level, and it's the same rule galleries use. Most people hang too high. Step back and look before you commit to a hole in the block.
Light It Like You Mean It
Overhead LED shop lights are great for working and terrible for looking at things. They wash everything flat and they blow out glossy vinyl with glare.
Put a dedicated light above the banner, aimed down at roughly a 30-degree angle. A cheap picture light or a short LED strip in an aluminum channel is plenty. The angle matters more than the brightness, because straight-on light bounces right back at you.
Color temperature is worth thinking about too. Stick around 3000K warm white. Warm light makes patina, oxblood, cream, and faded red look the way they're supposed to. 5000K daylight makes your garage look like a dentist's office.
Get it flat, get it at eye level, put a warm light on it, and a banner stops being wall filler and starts being the reason people walk over to that side of the shop.