What are Full-Colour Stickers?

Sticker printers have their own set of words to describe what they do. In this article I try to explain the meaning of full colour stickers, and show the difference between full colour and spot colour printing.

1. Full colour printing cannot usually print white, and where digital printers do print white, the white is not a very good white, but rather an off-white (either a grey or cream white). Therefore, full colour stickers are often restricted to white media, where the white in the sticker comes from the media itself and not the inks. Learn more about white sticker printing here.

2. Full colour printing is unable to print special-effect colours such as fluorescents or metallics. These special colours are restricted to spot colour printing.

3. Full colour printing becomes uneconomical at high quantities. At high quantities screen printing is best used (although the print quality is reduced when stickers are screen printed).

4. Full colour stickers when printed digitally can scratch or have the inks rubbed off if they are not laminated. This is especially the case if printed onto gloss media. The answer to this is to laminate these stickers. Lamination is the process of covering the inks with a film of transparent vinyl.