Shipping: Across India, MOQ applicable.
Pricing: Digital Glass Printing starting from ₹70 per square foot
When people talk about glass printing, they are almost always referring to images on specially printed glass films that are pasted on top of existing sheets of glass. Most glass panels or office panels are already fixed in place. There is no way to cart them off to the print shop for printing on the glass panels. So the solution is to have images or photos printed on glass films which can then be stuck onto the glass panels.
Modern office interiors, restaurants, shops, and other commercial spaces almost always have large proportions of their furniture made out of glass. You have buildings with huge glass facades, offices with glass partitions and cabins and of course, windows. Glass film printing for these myriad surfaces opens up a whole lot of opportunities for branding and interior decoration.
High resolution, wide-format printing is our speciality at Orchid Digitals, Pune. And rendering crisp images on printable films for glass is one of the abilities of our machines. Glass films come in rolls of 3, 4 and 5 feet. These rolls have a self-adhesive backing. Once the printing is done, the release paper / liner from the gummed back of the media is peeled off. Trained fitters then paste this glass film prints on the glass panel with the help of water and a squeegee.
Types of Glass Film Print Options Available at Orchid Digitals
For example, a transparent glass film print pasted on a glass partition will enable you to see what is happening on the other side of the partition. And at the same time, you can then brand the glass with assets like your company’s logo.
Alternatively, use a frosted window film to render your images. Your finished sheet of glass now gets a beautiful frosted, sanded effect. This brands the glass, makes it looks beautiful, and provides privacy. This solution is often referred to as window decals for privacy.
Absolutely yes.
Branding on glass is not a very expensive affair. You can keep changing the look of your glass partitions even on a modest budget. And more importantly, the adhesive / glue of glass films that we supply do not damage the surface of the glass that they are pasted upon. So, you can change the print if it does not meet with your specifications or if you get too bored looking at it.
Alternatively, if you are vacating the premises, just peel off the film, clean up any residual glue and the glass partition or door gets restored to its original state.
There are mainly six types of printed glass films that you can choose from. These films are categorised on the amount of transparency and the kind of look they impart to the glass substrate they get pasted on. At Orchid Digitals, we provide all six of the following kinds of solutions:
If you want to display images on your glass panels, but do not want to restrict views from either side of the same, it is best to opt for prints on transparent glass films. For this application, we stock an optically clear film. The machines print the requisite images on an extremely clear film. This film is then pasted onto the glass panel.
Since the film is optically clear, you can hardly differentiate between the printed film and the actual glass surface. The overall effect is as if the image is directly printed on the glass.
Transparent window vinyl prints are primarily used for branding glass facades or the frontage of commercial buildings. Let’s say you have a road facing showroom with a huge glass frontage. Add images of models or products to this frontage and the look of your showroom gets completely transformed.
There is one caveat to printing on clear films, which you need to be aware of. Since light passes through both the film as well as the images the vibrancy of the inks gets reduced somewhat. The white area of the image is transparent. This is obvious because otherwise how would you see through the print.
But since the printed image is also transparent, you can see objects or people moving on the other side of the printed area as well. One tends to lose some of the visual details of the print. This image loss can in no way be termed as an inferior print. In fact, it is an effect unique only to transparent prints.
But it might prove to be a surprise to architects or designers, who are new to the applications of transparent glass printing. They generally imagine that the finished job will look exactly like the artwork rendered on their computer screen. This is because, when they create their artwork, the same is fully opaque and viewed on a bright computer screen with very high contrast ratios.
We recommend that when you design artwork for transparent glass printing, add a little transparency to your objects. If you are using design software like CorelDraw or Adobe Illustrator, you can also insert another layer beneath your artwork. Put in visual cues like a room or people walking about, in this lower layer. And when they show through your semi-transparent artwork of the top layer, you’ll get an idea of what your final glass printing job will look like.
Sometimes an architect might want to brand a glass partition and at the same time needs to obscure what is happening on the other side. Frosted glass films printed with the company’s logo or product pictures provide a beautiful solution for this application. Frosted glass film prints, as the name suggests, have a dusted or sand-like effect. They are not transparent. However, though you cannot see through them, light does pass through this film.
Frosted Film Prints Available At Orchid Digitals
Let us say that you have a transparent office partition behind the reception or entrance lobby of your office. You do not want the casual visitor to see what’s happening inside the office. At the same time, you do not want to block natural light coming in through the partition.
Print out your company’s logo on frosted film and paste it onto the glass partition. In one go, your interiors are spiffed up, and employee privacy is maintained. Also, and this is a big plus, the frosted glass film you have used does not compromise on the light in your interior spaces. Have a look at the images below to see how great prints on frosted films look.
One way vision or mesh films are a unique solution to branding glass panels in offices and corporate interiors. These films allow vision to pass in one direction only. If you are standing on the printed side of the glass partition bearing this mesh film, you see the image or the branding done on the glass. The person standing on the other side can, however, see through the glass.
One way vision films are a boon to the boss’s cabin. The general staff cannot make out what is happening inside the office. But the boss sitting inside the office and behind the printed mesh film can see through and keep an eye on what is happening on the other side of the glass partition. You can read more about exactly how this effect is achieved on the dedicated page for one-way vision glass films.
If you need to block vision and light entirely, you can opt for opaque glass films. We print on self-adhesive vinyl and laminate the same. These vinyls are then pasted onto the glass to make it completely opaque.
Opaque Glass Film Prints Available at Orchid Digitals
The good thing about this solution is that you get an extremely high resolution and vibrant print on your glass panel. However, on the other side of the glass, you end up with a dull and boring white surface. If budgets are not a constraint, you can simply opt for two prints and have them pasted on both the surfaces of the glass panel.
You can read in detail about vinyl printing here.
As a general practice, most printed films are pasted on the top or front surface of the glass. But many times, the customer asks for an option wherein the film is pasted from behind the sheet of glass. In this scenario, while viewing the image from the front, the glass comes first and the print afterwards.
In top pasting, you are looking only at the print. The actual glass panel is covered. But in reverse pasted glass films, the gum / adhesive is right on top of the print. This enables pasting on the inside or back surface of the glass partition.
Opaque Glass Film Prints Available at Orchid Digitals
A familiar example of this application is the parking stickers or permits used in cars. These stickers are pasted from inside the windscreen of cars.
The advantage of using a reverse glass film print is that you retain the glass surface and it’s glossy effect on the front. The overall effect is somewhat like a back-painted glass.
There is one more type of glass sticker printing. This film is partially opaque and partially transparent. Which means that you can see through the part of the glass where there is no image printed. The part where the inks are applied are opaque. This creates a very neat effect wherein the images seem to be floating in thin air!
White Ink Film Prints Available at Orchid Digitals
We achieve this effect by printing in two layers, using white inks on our UV printer. To know more details about white ink UV printing, please click on this link here.
We can print directly onto sheets of glass. We have a flatbed UV machine for doing that. But the size of the glass panel that can be printed is limited to the size of the machine. Currently, our machine takes glass panels of 2 feet by 3 feet in size.
Do click on this link to check out more options about UV printing.
As mentioned earlier, glass printing films are available in rolls having 3, 4 and 5 feet width. Most doors or partitions are no wider than 5 feet. So, they can be easily covered by one continuous print. But there are certain cases where the glass area to be covered is much larger. We have images spanning shop-fronts that are easily 20 – 50 feet wide.
In such cases, we break the image up in tiles of 4 feet width. Each tile is printed and pasted separately onto the glass frontage. But when these tiles are joined together, they form a cohesive image.
Video On How to Paste / Install Glass Fim Prints
There are 4 main types of glass film prints we offer:
Transparent, opaque, frosted and one way vision film prints. Each of these films offer a different level of visibility and privacy. Apart from this we also have speciality films like white ink prints, reverse pastable films, etc.
Unfortunately we do not have ready designs for you to select from. We are just processors who print whatever design file the client supplies.
If you are looking for generic designs, I suggest that you source the same from sites like Shutterstock.com, Dreamstime.com. Download the images you like and share the same with us.
If you are looking for a highly customised design, you will probably need to hire the services of a professional designer. Click on the link below for more details:
https://orchiddigitals.com/our-favorite-pune-based-designers/
OCF or Optically Clear Films are a class of films that are ultra clear. They are so transparent that visually you cannot make out between the pane of glass and the film pasted on top.
When you view generic transparent films up close, you can make out faint marks of the glue. Sometimes the film itself has a tint slightly different from the sheet of glass beneath. And a discerning eye can make out that a separate film has been overpasted on top of the glass panel.
But OCF films are crystal clear. And differentiating the print from the pane beneath is almost impossible. Optically Clear Film prints also cost more than the traditional transparent film prints. But if you use them, it will seem as if the glass has directly been printed upon.
Yes. We can supply reverse pastable glass film prints on demand. Here, the prints are pasted on the inside surface of the glass partition and the viewer views the same from the other end.
The biggest benefit of reverse sticker prints is that they can be used to brand the window panes of high rise buildings. Accessing the outside surface of these panes is difficult because of the height of the building. And that’s where this feature comes in very handy.
Additionally, you get a can achieve a very premium looking back painted glass effect, using this option.
Our client can paste the glass film prints themselves, or hire a wallpaper guy to do the same.
And for our Pune based clients, we have a we have a team of pasters who can come and install the print on-site.
You can install glass film prints on your own. Just follow the steps listed beneath.
1. Make sure that the base surface is clean and smooth.
2. Spray a film of water on the surface where the job has to be pasted, and also on the adhesive back of the vinyl. This helps to reduce the initial strength of the glue and makes repositioning of the print easy.
After this initial prep, you can start pasting the wallpaper as follows:
1. Gently peel and start pasting glass film/vinyl starting from one corner.
2. Use a squeegee or handkerchief to smoothen the print on the surface.
3. Workout all the air bubbles and also the water to create a form bond between the adhesive and the surface beneath.
Finally,
1. Use a pin to puncture any bubble that may have remained.
2. Leave the print to dry out for a few hours. The glue will now form a strong bond with the substrate beneath.
Follow the above steps and you should be fine.
Also, for our Pune based clients, do give us a call and and we’ll send across a team to help with the endpoint-installation.
You can remove these prints or change them at a moments notice. Thus restoring the glass panels to their original state. There may be a little bit of residual glue post peeling. And the same can be cleaned away by a little thinner/petrol.
We can work with a variety of file formats. Do share your job as a .jpg, .pdf, .png, Corel Draw for EPS file.
Also, do make sure that the file has a sufficiently high resolution. While our machines have the capability to reproduce images of stunning quality, a high input resolution of your file will make a difference.
Most of our competitors pass of thin chinese lamination films as a glass branding product. Images do not get reproduced very well on these films and they also tend to crack and peel off. In fact lamination films are not even meant to be used for this application.
At Orchid Digitals, Pune we stock films from well known brands like Avery™, 3M™, Oracle™, etc.
These films are specially graded to brand glass. They last for years. And the inks on top do not fade. The films themselves are dimensionally stable. They do not crack or peel even at high (or very low) temperatures.
The minimum size of print we can process is 3 feet X 4 feet. For sizes smaller than this the billing amount still remains the same as that of size 3 feet X 4 feet.
We can send across a team for installing this product for our clients in Pune. This service will cost extra.
Yes. Online payments are accepted at Orchid Digitals. In fact we try to finish the entire job online. All you need to do is mail us your artwork/design file along with the requisite dimensions, material specifications, copies needed, etc.
After evaluating/understanding your project requirement we send across an estimate for the same. This estimate (in the form of a Proforma Invoice) will also contain an online paylink encoded in a QR code.
Scan the QR code to make the payments.
Once the funds are transferred, we process the job and the ship the same across to you.
Our custom printed wall prints can be delivered anywhere in India. The shipping charges for the same are extra and will be communicated to you once we receive the delivery address.
Additionally for our Pune based clients, we can send across a team to install the job as well.
Given below are the prices of the various types of glass printing films described above. The prices shown here are only for printing the glass films, and excludes the installation.
Most architects / interior designers get the subsequent pasting done by their own team. However, if you need support in getting the film passed at your premises, do call or write to us and we will get back to you with an estimate for the same.
Transparent film that allows visibility from both sides off the partition
Frosted film print that allows natural light to pass through but protects privacy by making the glass partition translucent
Convert your glass partition into a privacy panel. Visibility from one side and advertising / branding on the other
Cut all visibility and enhance your privacy behind the glass partition
Premium looking white ink prints on transparent film to create a partially opaque and partially transparent effect
Premium looking white + CMYK ink prints on transparent film to create a partially opaque and partially transparent effect
* Please Note:
3 feet (width) X 2 feet (height) X 2 copies X ₹ 70.00 (cost of print, as per the table above)
= ₹ 840.00 (+ 18% GST)
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