Why we made this wall planner.
DayByLife started with a simple frustration: every January a fresh wall planner goes up, and every December it goes in the bin. A year of plans, thrown away — and a wall you never really liked looking at anyway.
Buy once, not every January
Nothing on the calendar is dated. You write the year, the months land where you need them, and the same sheet serves you again next year. One purchase, not an annual subscription to paper.
Your wall stays yours
Most planners are a slab of white paper that flattens a room. Ours is a clear laminated surface, so the paint, the poster, the photo wall behind it all stay visible. The plan floats — it doesn't cover.
A year you can actually see
Phones are good at reminding you about tomorrow and terrible at showing you the shape of a year. Twelve rows on a wall does something an app can't: it makes time feel finite, and therefore worth spending well.
Plans should be allowed to change
Dry-wipe means nothing is permanent. Move a deadline, redraw a training block, wipe a hard month clean and start again. The calendar bends to your life instead of quietly judging it.
Where it came from
The first version was a sheet of clear film taped to a bedroom wall, drawn on with a marker, because nothing on the market did the one thing that mattered: show a whole year without hiding the room. It stayed on that wall for months, through a house move and two changes of plan.
People who visited asked where to buy one. Nobody could find an answer, because it didn't exist — every wall planner on sale was a slab of white paper with a year printed in the corner. That question is the entire reason DayByLife exists.
Why transparent
A calendar is a tool you look at every day, so it should earn its place visually. Printing onto an optically clear laminated surface meant the design had to be reduced to essentials — a fine grid, month rows, day numbers, a notes column. Everything else was removed.
No background colour is imposed on your room. The paint, the poster, the mood board, the photo wall all stay visible straight through the sheet. The plan floats on top of your wall instead of covering it — closer to a pane of glass than a piece of office equipment.
Why perpetual
Dated planners have a built-in expiry date. That's convenient for whoever sells them and wasteful for everyone else: a full year of plans goes in the bin every December, and the same purchase happens again every January.
Nothing on our calendar is dated. You write the year, the months land where you need them, and the same sheet serves you in 2027, 2030 and beyond. It also means you can start whenever you like — in January, in September, or on a random Tuesday when you decide something needs to change.
The face of the calendar
One layout, used consistently at every size: twelve horizontal month rows running January to December, day columns 1 to 31 across, and a notes column at the far right for the things that don't belong to a single date.
That structure is the whole point. Twelve rows on a wall does something an app can't — it makes a year feel finite. You can see a busy March pressing against a quiet April, and you can see how much room is actually left.
Three sizes, one design
A2 for a small wall, a desk nook or a shared kitchen. A1 as the core size, and the one most people end up choosing for a living room, studio or office. A0 when the year needs to be readable from across a room.
Every size ships rolled in a postal tube rather than folded, so the surface arrives flat and unmarked. Each is available in portrait or landscape, so the calendar fits the wall you already have rather than the other way round.
Plans should be allowed to change
Dry-wipe means nothing is permanent. Move a deadline, redraw a training block, wipe a hard month clean and start again. Wipe the whole sheet at year end and the calendar is new again.
That forgiveness matters more than it sounds. Paper planners quietly punish you for a plan that shifted; this one just lets you redraw it. The calendar bends to your life instead of recording your failures in permanent ink.
What people use it for
Training blocks and race days. Savings targets. A wedding. A house move. School terms and childcare weeks. Shift patterns. A business quarter, a launch, a filming schedule. Birthdays that repeat forever, written once and never re-entered.
The grid doesn't assume what kind of year you're having. It just gives you the whole thing at once, in front of you, every morning — which is exactly what a phone is worst at.
How we make it
The brief was narrow and it hasn't moved: an optically clear dry-wipe surface, a grid printed fine enough to disappear at a distance, no imposed background, and no year to expire. Everything is judged against whether it still looks right hanging over someone's actual wall.
We're a small independent maker, currently selling direct and through marketplaces, and we'd rather make one product properly than a catalogue of near-misses. Every order ships rolled in a tube with the accessories you need to hang it and keep it clean.
Plan it, See it, Live it.
Plan it: get the year out of your head and onto a wall. See it: keep it somewhere you can't avoid it. Live it: the part no calendar can do for you.
But a year you can see is a year you're far more likely to spend on purpose — and that, in one sentence, is the whole idea behind DayByLife.
Plan it, See it, Live it.
Pick your size and orientation, and get the year on your wall.
Get your calendar