Custom Perfume Bottles in Dubai | Any Artwork

What "custom" actually means on a perfume bottle

Three things get called a custom perfume bottle, and they are not interchangeable. One is a custom bottle, a mould made for a brand, which is a glassmaker’s job and starts in the tens of thousands of units. One is a custom label. The third, and the one this page is about, is a stock bottle with your artwork put onto the glass itself.

Route	What it is	Where it stops
A printed label or sticker	Artwork is printed on paper or film and stuck on.	Cheapest per piece at volume. The edge is visible and it can lift, and on a tester bottle handled all day it is the first thing to go.
Screen printing	Ink pushed through a mesh, one screen per colour.	Excellent for one or two flat colours in the thousands. A separate screen per colour means a photograph is not realistic, and there is a setup cost and a minimum.
Direct UV printing	The artwork is printed onto the glass itself and cured instantly.	Full colour and photographic detail in one pass, and no minimum. White has to be printed as its own layer before the colours read on clear glass.

The difference that matters to most people asking is the last column. A label is something laid over the glass, and it has an edge. A print is in the surface, and it does not.

Any artwork, not just a logo

Most enquiries open with a logo, because a logo is what people assume a bottle can carry. A logo is the easy case.

The bottles at the top of this page are a run of 500 flat glass perfume bottles, each printed with a full painting: an Emirati couple in traditional dress, the Abu Dhabi skyline and Qasr Al Watan behind them, palms, water, and bilingual lettering above. Two artworks ran in the same job, the couple and a portrait of a woman in a gold burqa. There is no logo on them at all.

Printed flat perfume bottles seen at an angle, the artwork showing through the clear glass from the unprinted face, the front bottle carrying a portrait of a woman in a gold burqa instead of the couple — The same run seen from the unprinted side. Clear glass means the artwork reads through the bottle as well as off the front of it. The bottle at the front carries the second of the two designs.

That is the thing worth knowing if you have been quoted for a logo and assumed that was the ceiling. Full colour, photographic detail and continuous tone are the same process and the same pass. What limits you is geometry, not the picture: how much flat area the bottle gives you before the shoulders start to curve away.

Front face or back face: reverse printing explained

On clear glass you get a choice almost nobody is offered, because almost nobody explains it.

Print on the front face and the ink is on the outside, facing you. It reads identically whatever is in the bottle, it can carry a raised or textured finish you can feel, and it is the straightforward option.

Print on the back face and you read the artwork through the thickness of the glass. This is reverse printing, also called second-surface or backside printing, and three things change. The artwork is mirrored before it goes to the press. The layer order inverts, so the white is printed last, on top of the colours, instead of first underneath them. And the glass ends up in front of the ink rather than behind it, which is where the glossy, set-back depth comes from.

The catch is that a reverse print is only as good as what sits behind it. An empty or lightly filled bottle shows it beautifully. A dark oud or a deeply coloured juice will swallow it. That is the whole decision, and it is worth making before the artwork is built, because mirroring a design afterwards is not always free.

Flat bottles are printed lying down

A flat bottle does not go on the cylindrical press. It goes on the flatbed, laid on its back in a jig, and the head passes over the face that is pointing up.

The same bottles on the flatbed, lying on their backs in a registered jig while the UV lamp passes over them. Flat bottles are printed lying down, one face at a time.

The jig is the quiet part of the job. Five hundred bottles have to land in the same place every time or the artwork walks across the run, and on a flat bottle there is no rotation to hide behind. For which press a given bottle needs, and what changes between them, see flat versus cylindrical perfume bottles.

What to send us

The bottle, or its exact make and size. We print on the bottles you supply; we do not manufacture glass.
Vector artwork where it exists, or a high-resolution image at final size for a painting or a photograph. Arabic converted to outlines so the letterforms cannot reflow.
Which face, and whether you want it read off the front or through the glass.
What goes in the bottle, which decides whether a reverse print is sensible and how the print is prepared against the fragrance.

There is no minimum order. A sample is AED 105 or AED 150 depending on what it is, and the fee comes off the invoice if you go ahead; on a repeat order there is no sample fee at all. Samples run one to three working days once artwork is approved and the bottles are with us.

Frequently asked questions

Can you print any artwork on a perfume bottle?

Within the printable area, yes. Direct UV printing puts the artwork onto the glass as a full-colour image, so a painting, a photograph, a gradient or a pattern is no harder than a logo. The bottles at the top of this page carry a painting of an Emirati couple with the Abu Dhabi skyline behind them, printed on flat glass at 500 pieces. What limits you is the flat area the bottle gives you and how the glass curves at the shoulders, not the complexity of the image.

How do you get a personalized perfume bottle made in Dubai?

Send the bottle, or its exact make and size, and the artwork. We print a sample on the real bottle first so you approve a piece you are holding rather than a screen preview. There is no minimum order, so one personalized bottle is a job we will take, and the same setup runs at 500.

Can you print on the back of a perfume bottle so it shows through the front?

Yes, and it is a different build. That is reverse printing, sometimes called second-surface or backside printing: the artwork is mirrored, the layer order is inverted so the white goes down on top of the colour instead of underneath it, and you read the image through the thickness of the glass. It gives a glossy, set-back look and it puts the glass between the ink and the world. It only works where the opposite face is clear and the bottle is not going to be filled with something that obscures it.

Which is better, printing on the front face or the back?

Neither, they do different jobs. A front-face print sits on the surface, can carry a raised or textured finish and reads the same whatever is in the bottle. A reverse print looks deeper and is protected by the glass, but it is only as good as what sits behind it, so a dark fragrance can swallow it. We will tell you which the bottle in front of us suits.

Do you print the bottle before or after it is filled?

Before. The bottle comes to us empty, is cleaned, printed and cured, and goes back for filling. Printing a filled bottle risks the contents and gives the press a moving target.

Is this printing or engraving?

Printing. Engraving cuts or frosts the glass, so the mark is colourless and you see through it, which is why an engraved bottle cannot carry a brand colour or a photograph. We print ink onto the glass, over white where the artwork needs to stay solid. If a single colourless name is all you want, engraving is a perfectly good answer and it is not what we do.

What is the minimum order for custom perfume bottles?

There is none. One bottle is a job. A sample is AED 105 or AED 150 depending on what it is and the fee comes off the invoice if you go ahead, and on a repeat order there is no sample fee at all.

How long does it take?

A sample is one to three working days once the artwork is approved and the bottles are with us. The run itself depends on the quantity and the number of faces, and goes on the quote.

Will the print survive the fragrance itself?

That is its own question, because alcohol and oud attack a print from the outside when a bottle is overfilled or wiped down. Our guide to alcohol-resistant perfume bottle printing covers how that is prepared and tested.

Have a bottle to print?

Send a photograph of the bottle and the artwork. We will tell you what the shoulders will do to the image, whether it should read off the front or through the glass, and print one so you can decide from the bottle in your hand.

Sun Studio LLC
Al Quoz First, Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Call: +971 4 346 7422
Email: info@sunstudio.ae

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