Sticker Materials

Vinyl. It shrugs off water, condensation and a wipe with a cloth, which is what you need on a drinks bottle, a cosmetic jar, a fridge or anything that goes outdoors. Paper and kraft are not waterproof — they will cockle and the ink will lift if they get wet.

Gloss is the default: the colours sit brighter, it wipes clean, and it is what most product labels use. Matte is the one to pick when the sticker carries a lot of small text or sits under a shop light that would otherwise glare off it, and it photographs better for anything that ends up on a product shot. Both are the same waterproof stock underneath, so durability does not come into the choice.

Indoors, dry, and where cost matters more than durability: box seals, address labels, price marks, event name badges, promotional hand-outs. It also takes a matte print better than vinyl does, so text-heavy designs read more cleanly on it.

Brown and slightly fibrous — the colour of the stock shows through the ink, so whites don't print white and colours read warmer and more muted than on screen. That's the point of it for artisanal and food packaging, but it does mean you should let us send a proof rather than judge it from the design file.

The stock is a silver metallic film and we print on top of it, so anywhere your artwork leaves white the silver shows through. Printing yellow over it gives a convincing gold. It's not hot-stamped foil — that's a separate process for cards and invitations — but at sticker sizes the effect reads the same and costs far less.

Yes. We'll send a small printed swatch pack of the materials you're deciding between, charged at cost plus courier and adjusted against your order. For anything going onto a product you're selling, it's worth doing.