How Long Do Giclée Prints Last?

Print permanence figures are quoted a great deal and understood rarely. A number like "over 100 years" is not a prediction about your print. It is the result of an accelerated light test on one ink and paper combination under stated conditions, and the conditions are doing most of the work.

That is not a reason to dismiss the ratings. A pigment print genuinely will outlast a dye print by a wide margin, and the gap is not marginal. It is a reason to understand what the number covers, because the difference between a print that lasts a century and one that visibly fades in a decade is usually not the print at all.

The short answer

A pigment giclée on acid-free cotton rag paper, framed behind UV filtering glazing and hung out of direct sun, should show no visible change in a normal lifetime. Manufacturer ratings for good pigment ink sets run past 100 years of indoor display and past 200 years away from direct sunlight.

The same print in a clip frame with standard glass, on a wall that takes afternoon sun, can show noticeable fading within ten to fifteen years. Same file, same ink, same paper. What changed was everything around it.

What a display permanence rating means

Permanence ratings come from accelerated testing. Samples are exposed to a controlled light source at an intensity far above normal room lighting, the fading is measured against defined thresholds, and the result is scaled back to an equivalent number of years under an assumed display condition. The two organisations whose figures carry weight in this field are Wilhelm Imaging Research and the manufacturers' own permanence laboratories.

Three things follow from how the testing works, and all three matter when you read a number.

• The rating belongs to a combination, not to an ink. The same ink set gives different figures on different papers, and a rating quoted without the paper is not a complete statement.

• The rating assumes a display condition. Framed under glass, unframed, in a window, away from direct sun: these are separate tests producing separate numbers, and they can differ by a factor of ten or more.

• The rating measures light fading. It does not measure what acidic mount board will do to the sheet, what damp will do, or what a pressure-sensitive tape will do. Those failures arrive independently of the ink and are, in our experience of opening old frames, more common than ink failure.

The figures for the ink we use

We print on an HP Designjet Z6200 with a ten cartridge pigment ink set. HP rate that ink set at over 100 years of display permanence on a range of media in indoor light, and over 200 years for display away from direct sunlight, based on testing by the HP Image Permanence Lab and by Wilhelm Imaging Research.

Those are manufacturer ratings for an ink and media combination under test conditions. They are not a guarantee we issue, and we would treat any framer or printer who presented them as one with caution. What we do guarantee is the framing, for 5 years.

Pigment against dye, and where the gap comes from

A dye is a colourant dissolved in liquid. It penetrates the coating and sits at a molecular level, which is why dye prints can look exceptionally vivid, and it is also why they fade: individual dye molecules are broken down by light and by atmospheric pollutants, and once a molecule has gone, its colour has gone with it.

A pigment is a solid particle suspended in a carrier. The particle sits in and on the coating, and light has to work through a far more resistant structure to degrade it. That is the whole of the difference, and it is the single biggest reason a giclée is worth commissioning over a photo lab print if the piece is meant to be kept.

It is also the first question to ask any printer, and the one where a vague answer tells you the most. Our guide to giclée and fine art prints covers the rest of that list.

What shortens a print, in order of impact

The ordering is the useful part. Ink and paper are the two things buyers ask about, and they sit third and fifth. Where a print hangs and what is in front of it outrank both.

Glazing does more than any paper upgrade

If you have a fixed budget and want the print to last, spend it on the glass before you spend it on the paper. Moving from standard float glass to conservation glazing takes ultraviolet transmission from roughly 55% down to about 1%, and there is no paper upgrade that comes close to that in effect.

Our guide to UV protection in picture framing goes through the tiers in more detail, including the cases where standard glass is genuinely enough.

The mount matters more than people expect

When we open a forty year old frame, the failure is rarely the ink. It is a brown band following the mount window where acid has migrated out of wood-pulp board into the sheet, or a yellowed tape stain at the corners, or a print bonded to the inside of the glass because nothing held it off.

None of those are print permanence problems, and none of them are prevented by a better paper. They are framing problems, and they are entirely avoidable with conservation mount board, reversible hinges and a spacer or mount that keeps the surface off the glazing. Our guide to signs a picture frame is damaging artwork covers what each of those failures looks like and which can be reversed.

Canvas is a different case

A stretched canvas hangs without glazing, so the single most effective protection available to a paper print is not an option. What a canvas has instead is a varnish layer, which gives some ultraviolet resistance and a physical barrier against dust and handling, and that is a weaker defence than 99% UV glass.

The practical consequence is that placement carries more weight for canvas than for anything framed. A canvas in a hallway away from windows will do well for decades. The same canvas above a radiator opposite a west-facing window is asking a varnish to do a job glass would do better.

Storage against display

Light damage only accrues while a print is being looked at. A print kept flat in an acid-free folder in a dark, stable room is subject to almost none of the fading mechanisms above, which is why edition runs held back for later sale can be decades old and look new.

For anyone holding unsold prints from an edition: flat, interleaved with acid-free tissue, in a solander box or archival folder, somewhere with stable temperature and humidity, and not a loft or a garage. Rolled storage is acceptable short term but leaves a memory in the sheet that has to be relaxed out before framing.

What we will and will not tell you

We will tell you the ink set, the paper by name and weight, and the manufacturer rating with the conditions it assumes. We will tell you which glazing tier we think a piece needs and why, and where we think standard glass is enough. Our guide to giclée papers sets out the archival properties of each stock we print on.

We will not put a number of years on your print. Nobody can, because the number depends on a wall we have not seen, in a room whose light we do not know, over a period none of us will be around to check. Any printer who offers a print-longevity guarantee is guaranteeing something they cannot measure. Our 5 year guarantee covers the framing, which is the part we control.

If you have an edition to print or a print to frame, tell us where it is going to hang and how much light that wall gets. It is a more useful question than which paper, and we will give you a specification built around the answer. Our giclée printing service covers papers, sizes and prices, and our conservation framing service covers the framing specification for work meant to last.