What is Glossy Coating? Types, Perks, & Pro-Application Techniques

Whether competing online or in physical retail stores, high brand visibility is essential to grab customers’ attention. Premium glossy coatings are specially designed for this purpose. They are shiny, reflective finishes applied to custom packaging solutions to make them more attention-grabbing, premium, and protective. According to synthesizing academic and market findings, 14% of consumers are reported to be attracted to shiny and glossy finishes on custom packaging and labels.

81% of consumers said that they were compelled to try something new because the product’s packaging was eye-catching and unique. 63% said that packaging drove them to repurchase. 52% even switched brands due to the appealing packaging of the product. The glossy coating was the commonest thing that helped brands attract customers from long distances in no time. Let’s explore in detail what is glossy coating, what are its famous types, and what professional application techniques are used to add this vibrant and high-end finish to the custom-printed packaging solutions.

Definition of Glossy Coating – A Premium Shine that Stands Out & Sell

As discussed above, glossy coating is a high-end and one of the most demanded finishing techniques. It is highly applied to custom-printed surfaces, such as bespoke packages, business cards, playing cards, brochures, product labels, and other such surfaces. This premium finishing technique stands out for giving each surface a phenomenal shiny, reflective, and smooth feel. By making the colors look more vibrant and images more detailed, the high-end glossy coating gives a more refined and polished look to the product’s packaging.

Famous Types of Glossy Coatings – A Breakdown of Premium Glossy Options

Let your custom packages shine like a pro. Here is the most famous glossy coating lineup. Check it out to find and pick the one that works best for your product’s packaging boxes:

1- Ultraviolet Gloss Coating – Ultra Shine, Ultra Impact!

Steal the spotlight with the brilliance of UV gloss! It’s a luxurious liquid coating that’s instantly cured with ultraviolet light to give a top-class shine or a mirror-like finish. With UV gloss coating you get a matchless sharp color contrast, excellent durability, and fast drying. Applied to custom packaging boxes, business cards, and book covers, this luxury glossy coating is one of the go-to finishing options for premium and tech-related products to grab customers’ attention.

2- Aqueous Gloss Coating – Fast, Fresh, & Stunning!

Get a classy shine that speaks sustainability! A water-based gloss coating is applied during the print process and offers a medium to high-grade shine level. It’s ideal for magazines, food packaging, and catalogs. Aqueous gloss coating benefits brands by providing an eco-friendly finish, quick drying, and a fingerprint-resistant surface for custom packaging solutions.

3- Gloss Lamination – Unmissable. Durable. Brilliant.

Make your products pop up on the store’s shelves. Go with gloss lamination to get premium box polishing to perfection. It’s a thin plastic film bonded to the print surface using heat or adhesives. It offers an extremely high-level shine, often referred to as the glassy surface for custom boxes. Premium gloss lamination is ideal for rigid boxes, gift packages, and other retail-ready packaging solutions.

4- Spot UV Gloss – A Guaranteed WOW Factor for Custom Boxes

Design in the details! Ensure a strategic shine for your custom-printed packaging boxes with advanced-quality spot UV gloss. It’s highly recommended to be applied to the specific parts of packages, such as logos or unique graphics. Spot UV gloss coating offers a very high shine level to the packaging, particularly to the targeted areas. Creating a premium contrast between glossy and matte areas, spot UV gloss adds a high-end tactile and visual impact to the bespoke packaging.

5- Varnish Gloss Coating – Low Cost, Big Impact Shiny Finish

Look premium without breaking the bank. Go with a varnish gloss coating, a clear liquid finish that is similar to ink that is applied during the box’s printing. It offers a low to medium shine level and is perfect for coating packaging inserts, greeting cards, and many more such packaging elements. Besides being cost-effective, varnish gloss coating is great for adding moderate gloss and protection to custom packaging solutions.

Advantages of Glossy Coating – Why Use Glossy Coating?

This luxury coating is far more than a mere custom box finishing, it’s a powerful branding tool that transforms packaging into an engaging, market-ready experience. Below are some of the benefits of glossy coating that make it a go-to finishing option for countless businesses all around the globe:

1- Enhance a Product’s Visual Appeal

In retail, a lasting first impression is everything if you want to stand out and succeed. It is observed that glossy-coated packaging often gets noticed faster than matte alternatives, giving your products a competitive edge. It instantly amplifies the look of any box by making colors more vibrant and eye-catching. The reflective surface catches the eye under light, making products stand out on shelves and online.

2- Give a High-End Feel to the Packaging

Featuring sleek and smooth textures, glossy coatings give a luxurious and more professional feel to the packaging. It’s a common observation in society that shine is often associated with quality, innovation, and attention to detail. Whether you’re in cosmetics, tech, fashion, or any other high-end industry, gloss lamination is the ideal option to boost your brand’s perception and revenue.

3- Improve Color Depth & Contrast

Reflective glossy coatings are the best source to deepen color tones and improve contrast. They ideally make text, graphics, and logos appear clearer, refined, and attractive. This clarity boosts a brand’s recognition in the market and improves readability and understanding. This ultimately leads to building more customers’ trust and fast decision-making.

4- Protect the Packaging from Scratches and Moisture

Shielding custom packaging is one of the major benefits of high-gloss finishes. Gloss coatings don’t just boost a box’s visual appeal but also act as a protective layer, shielding the box surface from dirt, moisture, scratches, and handling damage during shipping or display. This premium coating keeps the freshness and intactness of custom boxes, even in high-traffic areas and e-commerce deliveries.

5- Serve as an Effective Marketing & Visual Branding Tool

Featuring a shiny appeal, glossy coatings work exceptionally well with foil stamping, embossing, spot UV, and other techniques. Digital marketers and designers use industry-leading tools to make custom packages more dynamic and unforgettable. Boosting visual and tactile engagement, gloss lamination is perfect for enhancing customers’ unboxing experiences and driving social shares.

6- Ensure Versatility Across Different Industries

Glossy coating is one of the most-demand finishing techniques, highly suitable for almost all industries. Whether you belong to the cosmetics, electronics, food, beverage, or luxury product industries, the high-end glossy coating is the ideal pick to boost a product’s visibility on the store’s shelves and multiply sales and profit. In short, gloss is the one solution that adapts to many brand voices.

7- Help Brands Save Money

In contrast to other specialty finishes, standard gloss coating is a highly affordable option. Though it offers a high-end visual look and tactile feel, it’s available at cost-effective prices. This makes it the ideal go for businesses looking to maximize their impact without breaking the bank.

Glossy vs Matte Finish Benefits – Which Coating Sells More!

Glossy Coatings Materials & Formulations – The Nitty-Gritty You Must Know!

As there are different types of glossy coating, each is made up of different materials and finishes. Here is a tabular description of the materials and chemicals used in making high-end glossy laminations:

Manufacturing of Glossy Coating – A Step-by-Step Guide

Here’s how the glossy coating is made:

• First, choose from different types of glossy coatings based on their application, benefits, and drying methods. The famous options include aqueous, UV, and varnishes. Though each type has its specific formulation, the core manufacturing steps are similar.
• Then, select and prepare the base resin. A film-forming resin is used to determine the finish, adhesion, and gloss level. Acrylic or styrene-acrylic polymer is generally used for aqueous gloss lamination. Epoxy, polyester, or urethane acrylate oligomers are preferred for UV coatings. Alkyd resins or modified rosin esters are highly selected for glossy varnishes. The chemical resin is typically mixed and pre-emulsified with stabilizers or surfactants for better emulsification.
• After that, high-grade additives are added to resins to improve the application performance, durability, and aesthetic appeal of glossy layers. The most-used options include waxes, photoinitiators, anti-foaming agents, rheology modifiers, and different drying agents.
• Next, all the raw materials and additives are added to a mixing vessel and processed under high-speed agitation to ensure uniform blending. The temperature of the vessel is generally controlled (ranging between 25-60°C) to ensure chemical stability, and pH is normally balanced to maintain the shelf life and performance of the coating, The result is always a homogenous glossy coating mixture.
• Once the formulation is completed, the product is filtered to remove particles and impurities. The coating is tested for gloss level, viscosity, pH, adhesion, scratch resistance, and drying/curing time. Batches that meet standards move on to packaging.

How to Apply Glossy Coatings? – Master the Art of Glossy Coatings

Numerous methods of glossy coatings application are available in the market. A few are listed below:

• Flood coating
• Spot coating
• Roller coating
• Spray coating

Here the glossy coating process is explained, organized by each famous type of glossy coating demanded in the market:

1- Aqueous Gloss Coating

• The application method is “flood coating via offset print”.
• In aqueous gloss, the coating is applied over the entire printed sheet with the help of a flood coater or inline coating unit combined with an offset printing press.
• A blanket or anilox roller evenly spreads the water-based coating on the packaging surface.
• It is then quickly dried through infrared or hot-air dryers before the sheet proceeds to cutting or binding.

2- UV Gloss Coating

• This high-end gloss coating is applied via a roller or screen press.
• Once applied, it passes under a UV curing lamp where the coating is instantly hardened by photoinitiators.
• Depending on the design, UV gloss coating is applicable for both flood and spot coatings.

3- Varnish Gloss Coating

• Inline roller or spray coating methods are the ideally used application methods for varnish gloss coating.
• A varnish unit in a printing press is used for the top-class application of gloss varnish.
• Then the varnish layer is rolled onto the sheet like ink or professionally sprayed in specialized setups.
• It dries via oxidation or evaporation, taking longer curing times.

4- Spray Coating

• Nozzle spraying in booths or automated arms is the highly used professional method in spray coating.
• The glossy coating is atomized into a fine mist and professionally sprayed onto the packaging surface using handled spray guns or automated robotic arms.
• Spray coating is ideally used for irregular shapes or 3D custom packaging elements.
• Air-drying, UV curing, or heat treatments are often required drying methods for spray coatings.

Concluding Remarks

Glossy coating is one of the most demanded laminations for custom-printed packaging boxes. It makes your packaged products more visible on store shelves and attracts a larger number of consumers in seconds. CPP Boxes provides the best-quality, wholesale custom boxes with high-end gloss laminations within 7-9 business days. Reach out to us at 888-395-0493 or quotes@cppboxes.com and share your custom packaging and coating requirements to make your products the star of the show.