Be Patient With Your Product Labels

_{Ian Renton  | 08/03/2018 | Product Labels}

When ordering eye-catching labels for the first time, the temptation is to apply and use them straight away. Instead, we recommend that you be patient with your product labels to ensure they stick firmly to your bottle, jar, tube, plastic container or other packaging item.

Your labels need time to cure, i.e. stick firmly to your product or container. This can take anywhere from six hours to 48 hours. The time taken depends on the strength of the adhesive which varies with different label material types and the surface the label is adhered to. Also, the weather conditions, particularly the level of humidity in the room, may affect how long it takes for the label to cure.

The curing process for label stocks is very similar to waiting for paint to dry. You would not put your hands over a freshly painted wall. The same logic applies to your product labels. For example, you would not put a label on a shampoo bottle and then put it straight into the shower or place a bottle of wine in an ice bucket straight after the label was applied.

Paint needs time to dry and labels need time to properly adhere to the surface of the container.

Test Your Product Labels Effectively

It is important to test your product labels but only after you have allowed the label to cure. It would be pointless testing the stock on say, a tube of lip balm if lip gloss or cream was rubbed into the label shortly after application. Labels or more accurately label stocks must be tested after they have had time to cure or adhere properly to the container.

To get accurate results, you also must apply your label to a clean surface and at room temperature. If your labels are tested under the wrong conditions, then you may inaccurately conclude that a perfectly suitable label stock for your product is deemed unsuitable.

Like a lot of label printing companies, we receive urgent requests for product labels. That is OK for repeat orders but if you are testing a particular label stock, then you just cannot rush this. Too often, we are asked to fix a problem caused by another company. Mostly, it is because that supplier has used the wrong stock for the required purpose. However, there is also the possibility that the stock was never tested properly in the first place.

Label printing is such a specialised field and there are literally hundreds of stocks to choose for your products. This is why we recommend testing for a new stock or for your first order of product labels. For the test results to be accurate, allow enough time for the labels to cure.