What Makes a High Quality Sticker?

What Makes a High Quality Sticker?

Laura Laura
4 minute read

There are a lot of sticker companies out there. And many people wonder how to determine which sticker companies make high-quality stickers. At Custom Stickers, we pride ourselves on making the highest quality stickers in the industry. Here we will talk about what goes into a high-quality sticker and how we set ourselves apart from other sticker makers.  

Making a sticker doesn't sound like a super tricky process - design, print, and cut - but there is a lot that goes into it. Materials, color capabilities, print resolution, and process all factor into the sticker quality.

DESIGN

high-quality sticker starts with a high-quality design. I don't simply mean an excellent design or incredible piece of art. I'm talking about the resolution and quality of the file itself.

At Custom Stickers, we don't print blurry or low-resolution files. Instead, every file that comes through our door is quality checked, and when we get something lower resolution than what our state-of-the-art printers can handle, we kick the file over to our design team.

They have a lot of experience in enhancing images. They'll do the heavy lifting to enhance your design and ensure that the file isn't pixelated or blurry.

In some cases, this may even involve recreating a logo or design so that the final product is a crisp, high-quality sticker. But, don't worry, we send proofs after any adjustments so that you can see the difference and make sure it's exactly what you want.

We wrote a blog post with additional information about raster images and vector files if you are starting to design a sticker.

VINYL

A high-quality sticker requires more than just a quality design, however. The material that it's printed onto is also essential.  

When choosing a sticker company, consider the specifications they promise on their vinyl. For example, is the vinyl UV resistant? Is it waterproof? Can it stand up to rain, sleet, and snow? What about dishwashers and microwaves?  

At Custom Stickers, we spend a lot of time developing our product and ensuring that we use the highest quality materials. Our vinyl is all of the above, and it has a minimum outdoor lifespan of 5 years. It won't fade, wear out, or lose adhesion for five years. It holds up going through the dishwasher or microwave. You won't find many sticker companies that offer this.  

FINISH

For us, the sticker finish is an extension of the vinyl and material discussion. We use high-quality laminate to finish all of our stickers. This adds to the durability and allows us to customize how it looks.  

We can apply matte or gloss laminate depending on your needs. However, note that some sticker companies don't finish their stickers with laminate. This makes them far less durable.  

COLOR

Color accuracy is one area where we set ourselves apart from the competition. In the print and sticker industry, the standard printer uses four unique colors of ink: Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Key (Black). These printers use those four colors to mix all other colors.

Unfortunately, the typical sticker printer doesn't produce specific colors accurately, especially color gradients and reds/oranges.

Our printers are state-of-the-art. We use ten unique colors of ink. In addition to the standard four colors of Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black, our printers use Orange, Red, Light Black (Grey), Light Cyan, Light Magenta, and White.

This gives us the best color accuracy and widest color gamut on the market. We can print photo and art quality colors and resolution with 98.2% Pantone coverage.     

10 color epson printers

RESOLUTION

I can't think of anything worse than a custom sticker that comes out blurry or pixelated. We print all of our stickers in 1440p resolution. This means that we can print complex, highly detailed designs without issue.

If your design is low-res, our talented design team won't send it to the printer. Instead, they will enhance it. If a design that looks like it will be blurry or pixelated comes through our system, we will work on it until it looks great.

You always get free proofs, so you can approve the enhancements we make to clarity and resolution before we print.    

CUT

Finally, the cut of the stickers. Die-cut stickers (stickers cut to the shape of your design) are our most popular product. Our cutting machines can cut highly detailed shapes with extreme accuracy and precision. As a result, your stickers will look exactly how you want them.

I hope this was informative, and you better understand why CustomStickers.com makes the best stickers in the business.

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