Colored Edges
Our colored edges are the perfect finishing touch to make your cards stand out. We offer a wide range of standard inks, fluorescent inks, metallic inks, and foils that can be applied to the edges of your cards. We also have the option of providing a custom ink color to be added to your cards.
What colors can I add to the edges of my cards?
All colored edges done in ink do have to be a Pantone or PMS color. We are not able to print CMYK ink on the edges of the cards. If you have a custom PMS color you would like to use on your cards, we would need you to provide us with the PMS color code, and we will check to make sure we have this ink color.
Our selection of colors is vast, but the colors we carry are typically 3-4 digits in length, and end in a “C” or a “U”. The “C” or “U” refers to how the color looks on a coated or uncoated stock. The edges of our cards are always uncoated.
Colored edges often coordinate with the colors on your cards, but getting an exact match may be difficult for a few reasons. First, the edges of the cards are uncoated, and the face of the card is usually coated. This causes a difference in color.
Additionally, we typically print the face of the card in CMYK, while the edges of the card are always PMS inks. We could get close if the build of the CMYK is close to the PMS inks, but can’t guarantee that they will match exactly. We do offer the option to print on the face of the cards in PMS ink as well, but the printing method on the edge of the cards is different from printing on the face of the cards, so there will be slight variances. We can get it close, but it won’t always be exact.
Foil edges
Foil edges can be a showstopper for your cards! The foil options for the edges of cards are the same as foil options for the front and back of the cards, so we can match them exactly.
One stipulation of foil edges is that they can only be applied to cards with straight edges. No custom shapes, or cards with rounded edges or corners. If you need to have those rounded edges, we recommend going with a custom ink edge instead of foil.
If you are wanting a metallic edge color, but your design won’t allow for straight edges, we do have our metallic ink options! We offer a metallic gold, silver, and copper ink edge. Please note that the metallic silver edge is very subtle.
Metallic ink edges do reflect light, just not as dramatically as our foil options. They have more of a shimmer than a reflection, but they are definitely eye-catching!
Bleeding risk for colored edges
You may have noticed on our proofs that there is a note on a few of our products that the colored edges could bleed slightly to the face of the cards. This is mostly a risk on the following cardstocks: Uncoated, Cotton, and Linen. These cardstocks are more absorbent and ink application could cause a slight bleed to the face of the cards.
Another risk for bleeding is when the colored edge color and card color have a very high contrast, such as a white card with a black edge, or a black card with a metallic silver edge.
Bleeding with the colored edges is very slight, but will be more noticeable on the more absorbent stocks, or with higher contrast colors.