Spot UV Printing

Ready to take your printing to the next level of creativity and beauty? Have you been looking for a way to stand out from the crowd with printing that dazzles the eye? Among all of the custom printing options available, spot UV printing is one of the most brilliant effects you can add to your project. Offering eye catching designs that shine on top of printed inks, spot UV coating is an irreplaceable effect that is truly unique. Consider spot UV business cards as a great way to launch into the endless possibilities of spot UV.

What is Spot UV Coating

Due to its eye catching appearance and versatile applications, spot UV is one of the most popular printing techniques available. While it may sound futuristic, “Spot UV” is a relatively simple production method. The “UV” portion of spot UV comes from the ultraviolet light that’s used to instantly cure the glossy varnish you see shining in spot UV printing. UV coatings are environmentally friendly as they are free of solvents and do not emit volatile organic compounds, or VOCs when cured. The incredibly fast speed at which the UV varnish dries is exactly how Printing for Less can get such amazing detail in spot UV designs like the one you see above. While all UV coatings protect the paper they cover, spot UV is mainly used for its decorative effect as light catches the partially coated portion of the paper on a piece – rather than all-encompassing protective coverage.

Suggested Coating Applications

Spot UV will work on a wide variety of paper stocks, including everything from heavy 24pt cardstock, to thinner 100# text. Regardless of the thickness of paper stock, spot UV always has the greatest impact on a matte finished paper, whose muted background will contrast most highly against the extreme shine of the UV coating. In choosing the selected locations of your spot UV coating, consider a couple of different approaches.

Clear Impact

• Clear impact is a technique where a solid color background is left blank, and decorated with spot UV to create the design or text itself. Arguably the best and most creative use of the spot UV effect, clear impact simply can’t be created with any conventional inks or papers. Take a look at the image above and ask yourself, have you ever seen printing like this before?

Image Accentuation

• Another great way of utilizing spot UV is to coat a specific image or portion of a printed image on your project. For example, you could spot UV coat your logo on a business card or postcard for added pop. If you owned a water purification company, and you’re sending out a mailer with pictures of your delicious pure water – you might consider spot UV coating only the pouring water portion of the photograph. This kind of image accentuation is a pleasant surprise to the viewer, who’ll no doubt be wondering “how’d they do that?!”

Additional Custom Coating Effects

While you can always combine spot UV with any number of other custom printing effects like die cutting, embossing, or foil stamping; there are some custom techniques that best compliment spot UV. For example, soft touch coating your printing before adding spot UV creates an ideal matte finished background that really makes the shiny varnish pop. Basic matte finished paper stocks will also help this effect, but soft touch also adds value by creating its own unique physical feeling to the piece. This combination of soft touch and spot UV is commonly referred to as “Silk Spot UV”.