There are three kinds of finish you can choose from when designing your brochure printing project. All three offer varying degrees of protection for your carefully laid out presentation. Without a coating, the ink on your brochures would be easily smudged without this added protection. Which one you choose depends on the nature of your product and the purpose of your brochure.

1. Varnish - All printers can apply varnish, which is basically an ink without coloring pigment that can be applied along with your brochure’s colored ink or after. When varnish is applied with the ink during the brochure printing process, the resulting finish is dull. Applying the varnish after the ink in a second pass through the printer provides a much more glossy result. Varnishes can be tinted to add depth of color to the brochure, but they do tend to darken with age. If a particular brochure marketing campaign is short-lived, this is not an issue when making your decision. When applied in a second printing pass, varnish offers the additional option of spot application: using different levels of gloss on certain areas of the brochure to add impact and draw attention. Varnish is not used by most professional printers today because of the high cost. Much more economical and high quality coatings are available today, as explained below.

2. UV coating – Gloss and matte finishes can also be achieved with UV coating, which can be done in a spot or flood application. In the flood application, a clear liquid is spread over the entire sheet and then exposed to UV light to cure it. This spot method requires a screen printing application followed by exposure to the UV light. UV coating is a heavy duty finish that offers excellent protection against wear and tear. In a folding application, it may crack so be sure to consult your printing experts when considering if UV coating is right for your brochure printing project. When considering the environmental friendliness of the brochure printing, there are two consideration regarding UV coating: it is cured with light instead of heat and therefore no harmful chemicals are released into the atmosphere during the process; adversely, the end product is more difficult to recycle than other coatings. One could argue that applied to a timeless advertisement, this would be ideal as the brochure would last longer once in the consumer’s possession thus negating the need to print more copies using further resources.

3. Aqueous – Water based aqueous coating is the standard option for printing and is more environmentally friendly than the UV coating. The protection and appearance of aqueous coating are superior to that of varnish. Aqueous coating is applied by flood application after the ink in the first printing run and is available in both gloss and matte for your brochure printing. It cannot be applied as a spot finish, but its superior quality enhances the rich color of the inks it covers while protecting it from scuffing and smudges. Another advantage of aqueous coating is that it can be applied to text paper stock as well as cover stock, whereas UV coating can only be applied to cover stock.