Printed Glass Ideas
Printed glass splashbacks and shower panels look amazing. They’re unique works of glass art that can bring your interior design to life. Here are some tips to help you choose an image you’ll love.
Shape
Think about the size and shape of your area. You have to keep most images in proportion, so rectangular images can’t be squashed into a square. But you might be able to crop a square image from part of a large rectangular one, or crop a rectangular image from a large square one.
Subject matter
Consider the mood or atmosphere you want to achieve. For example, if your property overlooks the city skyline and you’re usually in at the evenings, you might like to bring that into your house with something like Lucy G’s image of Auckland by night. If you prefer a tranquil atmosphere and you love the serenity of our native forests you might like to see this replicated in your kitchen or bathroom. Of course, if you’re a bit of a foodie, creating your unique kitchen might be as simple as choosing some fresh food imagery.
Bold and up close or smaller and long range
Large objects in your image can help bring your walls closer and add a cosier feel to wide open spaces. Alternatively, you can often add a sense of space to smaller rooms by keeping the objects in your image smaller, less crowded or distant.
Colours
Remember to choose images with tones that will suit the rest of your décor. Even photographs of natural landscapes will feature either greens, browns, reds, blues or greys. Colours can add a feeling of warmth to colder rooms or a refreshing coolness to rooms that get a lot of sun.
Finding images
There are plenty of websites where you can buy the right to use an image for a very reasonable price. Here are a few of the more popular sites:
There are also specialist photographers and designers who make their images available for a fee, such as Lucy G, David Kerr, Sarah C and Ella Doran.
Custom images
Perhaps you have a special photograph or piece of art your child has drawn and you’d like to turn it into something special. Our talented graphic designers can help bring that to life through your unique printed glass.
Image resolution (quality)
All images on the above websites will generally come in the correct file format and the appropriate resolution of 300 dpi.
If you want to take your own photos, we recommend using a digital SLR camera set to 4500 pixels wide by 3000 pixels high. This is about the highest (best) resolution of a 14 megapixel digital SLR camera. Save the images as CMYK jpeg files.
Lower resolutions might be OK. It really depends on the size of your glass and how large the image needs to be. We can check your image and let you know whether it can be used. If there are any costs involved in enhancing a marginal image we’ll let you know before we go ahead.
Artwork specifications
If you’re getting a designer to create an image for you, or creating your own, we prefer to receive all artwork files in the vector format, either Vector EPS or AI files. Any text included in artwork needs to be saved as outlines.
Resizing or repeating images
We’ll be happy to provide a quote for cropping (cutting) supplied artwork to size, or repeating multiple vector square patterns chosen from image websites to match the proportions of your glass. We just need to see the images first because some patterns can be repeated easily and others can take some time to get right.
Peace of mind
We provide a full colour print for you to place in the area where the glass will go. This allows you to get a feel for the image in the space it will occupy and be completely confident you’ll love it. Plus your printed glass image comes with a 5-year guarantee against fading and a 20-year guarantee against delamination or faulty workmanship.
