Best Paper for Giclée Prints

Paper does more to the look of a giclée than any other single decision. The same file printed on a smooth cotton rag and on a heavy watercolour paper produces two prints that a buyer would not obviously identify as the same image, and the difference is not subtle.

This is a reference to the papers used for fine art inkjet work: what each one is made of, what surface it has, and what kind of original it suits. Every figure here comes from the manufacturer datasheets rather than from retailer copy.

The short answer

For most reproduction work, a smooth 100% cotton rag paper around 308 to 310gsm is the right default. Hahnemühle Photo Rag 308gsm and Photo Rag Bright White 310gsm are the two that most studios reach for, and they cover drawings, prints, photographs and the majority of paintings.

Move away from that default for a reason, not out of habit. A watercolour original wants a textured paper because the texture is part of what you are reproducing. A photograph with deep blacks wants a baryta surface because matt paper cannot hold that density. Everything else is closer to a preference than a rule.

What makes a paper suitable for a giclée

Four things, in roughly this order of importance.

• It is acid-free and lignin-free. Lignin is the compound in wood pulp that breaks down into acids and yellows paper from the inside. Cotton contains none of it, and alpha-cellulose papers have had it removed. Every paper in the table below is both.

• It carries a proper inkjet coating. A fine art paper without a receiving layer will let pigment spread into the fibres, and the print will look soft and weak no matter how good the file is. This is why watercolour paper from an art shop is not the same thing as inkjet watercolour paper.

• It is buffered. Most quality fine art papers are calcium carbonate buffered, which gives them an alkaline reserve to neutralise acids picked up from the air over decades.

• It has an ICC profile for the printer it is going on. Without one, colour is a guess. This is a workflow requirement rather than a property of the paper, but it decides whether the paper performs.

The papers compared

All eight are acid-free and lignin-free. Weights are the manufacturer figures, not approximations.

Smooth or textured

This is the choice that changes the print most, and it should follow the original rather than personal taste.

A smooth paper resolves fine detail cleanly and gets out of the way. Pencil, pen, etching, engraving, photography and tightly worked painting all read better on it, because nothing in the paper competes with what is in the image.

A textured paper adds surface that was not in the file. On a watercolour reproduction that is the point: the original had tooth, and printing it on a smooth sheet flattens it into something that looks like a photograph of a painting rather than a painting. On a detailed line drawing the same texture breaks up the line and the print looks softer than the original.

The trap is choosing texture because it feels more like art. If the original is smooth, a textured paper is a decision to change the work.

What gsm tells you and what it does not

Grams per square metre is a measure of weight, not of quality. It is worth being blunt about this, because gsm is the number most often quoted as though it were a grade.

A 350gsm paper is heavier and usually thicker than a 210gsm one. It feels more substantial in the hand, it lies flatter in a mount, and it is harder to crease. None of that makes the print better. Photo Rag at 308gsm and Museum Etching at 350gsm are both 100% cotton and both archival; the 42 gram difference buys you a more physical object, not a more permanent one.

Where weight does matter is handling and framing. Heavier papers are more forgiving through the workshop, sit better under a mount without cockling, and hold a deckled edge properly if the piece is being float mounted. Very light papers can ripple with humidity changes once framed, which is a real problem and covered in our guide on signs a picture frame is damaging artwork.

Optical brighteners, and why archival work avoids them

Optical brightening agents are fluorescent compounds added to paper to make it look whiter. They absorb ultraviolet light and re-emit it as visible blue, which fools the eye into reading the sheet as brighter than it is.

They work, and they are not a defect. The problem is that they degrade. Over years of light exposure the brighteners break down, the blue emission fades, and the paper drifts back towards its natural tone. A print that started brilliant white slowly warms, and because the change is gradual and even, most owners never notice it happening. For a piece meant to last, a paper with no brighteners starts closer to where it will end up.

None of this makes a bright white paper the wrong answer. High-key photography, contemporary graphic work and anything where the paper is meant to read as pure white all benefit from it. It is a choice to make knowingly rather than a box to avoid.

Which paper suits which original

Canvas instead of paper

Canvas is a different proposition rather than a heavier paper. A giclée on canvas is varnished for protection, stretched over a wooden support and gallery wrapped so the image continues around the edges, and it hangs without glazing. That last point is the real trade-off: no glass means nothing between the print and the room, so canvas relies entirely on the varnish and on where it hangs.

It suits large decorative work, reproduction of paintings that were themselves on canvas, and anywhere a frame would be visually heavy. It does not suit anything you would want behind UV filtering glass. Our canvas framing page covers the tray and floating options once a canvas is stretched.

How to choose without guessing

Nobody picks a paper correctly from a table, including us. The table narrows it to two or three candidates; a test strip decides it. Printing the same crop of your image on each shortlisted paper and looking at them together, in the light the finished piece will hang in, settles the question in about five minutes and costs very little compared to reprinting an edition.

Two things worth knowing when you compare studios. A paper is the same paper whoever loads it, and studio certification schemes certify a studio's process rather than the material. And a paper only performs if there is an ICC profile built for it on that specific printer, so the profile is the question worth asking, not the brand on the box.

What we print on

Our house fine art stock is Hahnemühle Photo Rag Bright White 310gsm, which is what we specify for gallery editions, and we order in anything else a client asks for. Printing runs on an HP Designjet Z6200, 62 inches wide, with a ten cartridge pigment ink set, and every paper we use has its own ICC profile built in house and soft proofed against a calibrated monitor before the run.

Our giclée printing service lists the papers, sizes and prices, and our guide to giclée and fine art prints covers what the terms do and do not guarantee. Because we have been framing since 1974, a print goes straight from the roll into the framing workshop rather than being packed and posted between the two stages.

Send us a photograph of the original and the size you have in mind, and we will tell you the two or three papers worth proofing and print strips of each.