Mural is the general term for any large painting on a wall or ceiling, while fresco is a specific technique where pigment is applied onto wet plaster so the colour becomes part of the wall as it dries. A fresco is always a mural, but a mural is only a fresco if it used that wet-plaster method.
The core difference
Mural describes any large wall painting; fresco names the specific technique of painting onto wet plaster.
- fresco — a painting made by applying pigment onto wet plaster, so the colour becomes part of the wall as it dries: Michelangelo painted the famous frescoes on the Sistine Chapel ceiling.
- mural — a large picture painted directly onto a wall or ceiling: the artist spent a month painting a mural on the side of the school.
How to tell them apart
Mural is the category and fresco is one method within it. A modern street mural painted with acrylics onto a dry, already-built wall is still a mural, but it is not a fresco, because fresco specifically means the pigment goes onto plaster while it is still wet, binding the colour into the wall as it dries. That is why frescoes like the ones in the Sistine Chapel have survived for centuries; the paint is not just sitting on the surface.
The word fresco itself comes from Italian for fresh, referring to that fresh, damp plaster the paint is applied to, and it shares that root with the English word fresh. Knowing this helps explain why fresco is used narrowly for historic, plaster-based techniques, while mural is the everyday word people reach for when describing any large wall painting, old or new.
