Custom Printing for Luxury Retail Displays in Dubai: Glass, Acrylic, Wood and ACP

Sun Studio prints artwork directly onto the glass, acrylic, wood, MDF and ACP pieces that make up a luxury retail display or boutique interior: display panels, plinth faces, product backdrops, decorative glass and feature panels, printed at our studio in Al Quoz, Dubai, for projects across the UAE. Choose each material for where the piece sits and how it is handled, approve the brand colour on a printed sample of that material under light like the store's, and agree with your fabricator what reaches us, in what order, and who installs it. Sun Studio prints; supply, fabrication and installation normally stay with your fabricator or fit-out contractor.

Sun Studio belongs to the same Dubai group as PRO TECHnology, which distributes Direct Color Systems and IQDEMY equipment in the Middle East, so read our view of the machines with that in mind.

The short version

• Pick the material per piece: glass, acrylic, wood/MDF or ACP, by position, handling and cleaning.
• Approve colour on a printed sample of each material, under light like the store's.
• Clear and dark materials need white ink under colour wherever the artwork must read solid.
• Reverse printing needs a clear sheet; raised detail belongs on the face people touch.
• Send the elevation and panel schedule first, and fabricate before anything is printed.

What we print for boutiques and retail displays

To order display pieces, from a single plinth face to a multi-store rollout, see our retail display printing page. This guide covers planning a display or boutique interior: the material, colour approval, panel layout and the split of work with your fabricator. We print:

• Display panels and headers above and behind a fixture.
• Plinth faces in acrylic, board or ACP for a product display plinth, for your fabricator to fit.
• Product backdrops and back-of-counter feature panels.
• Decorative glass: printed shopfront and counter glass, doors, partitions and backsplashes, on interior or protected glass (glass printing in Dubai).
• Acrylic components: standoff panels, frosted panels for backlighting, cut shapes and letters, menu and price boards (acrylic printing).
• Wood and furniture panels: sealed MDF and veneer wall panels (wood and MDF printing), and printed fixture and cabinet fronts, printed flat before assembly.
• ACP: feature panels and fascias inside the store (ACP panel printing).

A finished wall is printed on site instead, with wall printing. Building the stand, case or fixture is fabrication and normally sits with your fabricator; we print the panels. We do not make cardboard floor-standing units or print fabric backdrops by the metre or on rolls, and façade glass needs fired ceramic frit from the glass processor. Specialist work has its own pages: perfume bottle printing, leather printing and braille and tactile signage, and the machines are on our printer fleet page.

You or your fabricator normally supply the material. On request we can source the material too, including glass, acrylic, aluminium and ACP. There is no minimum order, so a single sample piece or prototype display is a normal job.

Glass, acrylic, wood/MDF or ACP: choosing the material

Choose the material piece by piece. How the four compare:

Glass

• Suits: decorative glass, shopfront glass indoors or under cover, feature panels, backsplashes. Interior and protected glass only.
• Colour: white ink decides solid colour or tint; ordinary clear float glass has a slight green cast, and low-iron is the extra-clear option.
• Reverse and raised: second-surface printing keeps the print away from cleaning; ask before planning raised detail on glass.
• Plan for: which face is viewed, and whether the glass is coated (coated glass is tested first).

Acrylic

• Suits: plinth faces, product backdrops, standoff and frosted backlit panels, cut shapes. Clear, opaque or frosted.
• Colour: clear sheet needs white wherever colour must hold; opaque sheet is a ready-made ground.
• Reverse and raised: reverse printing on clear sheet gives depth and gloss; raised detail goes on the front face, and one sheet can carry both.
• Plan for: backlit or not, the size (see large panels below), and cleaning without solvents, which can craze the sheet.

Wood and MDF

• Suits: plinth bodies and fronts, fixture and cabinet fronts, wall panels. Sealed or primed MDF, veneer, plywood.
• Colour: raw MDF absorbs ink and mutes colour, so seal or prime it; leave white out to show the grain, or print white to cover it.
• Reverse and raised: no reverse printing (the board is opaque); raised texture is possible.
• Plan for: whether the grain shows, which edges are seen (cut edges absorb ink), and the facing (laminate and melamine are tested first).

Aluminium composite panel (ACP)

• Suits: large back-of-store and feature panels, fascias, pop-up store and exhibition panels, plinth faces. Polyester or PVDF coated.
• Colour: the ink sits on the coating; white under colour on dark, brushed or metallic faces, or none so the face shows.
• Reverse and raised: no reverse printing; raised relief up to 6 mm on the face.
• Plan for: how the artwork divides across the sheets, and the coating (PVDF faces are tested first).

For boards, our guide to grain, sealing and white ink on wood goes further.

Approving brand colour on the actual material

Give us the target (a Pantone reference, the brand guidelines or a physical sample) and say which colours are critical. A screen shows colour as light and a panel shows ink on a material, so the approved printed sample, not the file, becomes the standard. We work towards the reference and do not promise an exact match; our article on brand colour matching on glass explains why. The same reference reads differently on clear glass, white acrylic, sealed MDF and black ACP, so print one sample per material and judge the brand colour match with the samples side by side.

White ink is the main control: under the colour on clear, dark or metallic materials wherever it must read solid, behind a logo only where the rest should stay clear, or left out to let grain or a brushed face show. On the dark green glass doors of the DreamDraw offices, gold on dark glass goes muddy without a white base; with one, the gold stays gold.

Clear float glass pulls pale colours towards green. Pilkington describes its Optiwhite low-iron glass as practically colourless, without the green cast of other clear glass, so specify low-iron where a pale colour or clean white matters.

Judge the sample under the lighting it will have in the store. Two colours can match under one light and separate under another; X-Rite calls this metamerism. For a backlit panel, the test piece is printed on the same sheet and should be judged lit, as it will be in the store. Send photos of the lighting or its specification.

On our light blue colour-matched glass at The Dubai Mall, the colour was matched to the supplied reference and fixed on printed glass, and the approved panel set the standard for the rest. The client supplied the plain glass, cut with its holes, then collected the printed panels and installed them.

Gold and silver print as colours, without the mirror shine of foil; a true metallic needs another process. Keep the approved samples for the life of the project, replacement panels included, and tell us if the material or its supplier changes.

Reverse printing and raised details: where each suits

Reverse printing (second-surface printing) puts the ink on the back of clear glass or acrylic, so the image is seen through the sheet. The sheet adds depth and gloss and keeps the print away from hands and cleaning. The artwork is mirrored and white goes down after the colour, so tell us which face is viewed and how the piece is mounted. It needs a clear sheet, so not MDF, wood or ACP. Our guides to how direct and reverse printing on acrylic differ and reverse printing on glass explain when the back face is the better choice. For a reverse printed acrylic gallery wall in a Dubai office, landmark prints went on the back of 10 mm acrylic.

Raised detail is ink built up layer by layer, up to 6 mm, so a monogram, lettering or pattern can be felt. Hairlines are the wrong thing to build up, height adds press time, and anything taller is fabrication. It goes on the front face, the face people touch; it cannot go on the back face of a reverse-printed sheet. One clear sheet can carry both: a reverse print on the back and raised detail on the front. We build it on acrylic, wood, MDF and ACP; ask before planning it on glass. The Etihad Rail model base was printed on acrylic with the terrain built up in relief, and our article on how raised UV printing builds height covers the method.

On wood and MDF, varnish can be gloss or matte over selected areas; ask about other materials on the sample. Put gloss, matte and relief each on their own artwork layer.

Large panels: dividing the artwork and keeping it aligned

Large panels run on our IQDEMY EVO 2500, a belt flatbed 2.5 metres wide with no machine limit on length. Our Direct Color Systems UV84 has a 4 x 8 ft bed (about 1.2 x 2.4 m). Which press a piece runs on depends on the material: acrylic is printed on the UV84, so tell us early if an acrylic piece is larger than its 4 x 8 ft bed. Send each panel's width, height and thickness and we confirm the fit before anything moves: flatness and handling matter as much as the raw dimensions.

A display wall is usually divided anyway, because the material comes in sheets (a standard ACP sheet is 1220 x 2440 mm) and the fixture drawing sets the panel sizes, fixings and reveals. To keep the artwork aligned across the joins:

• Build the artwork once, at the full size of the run.
• Send the elevation with each panel's size, position, reference and the gap or reveal beside it.
• We split the file panel by panel so lines meet across each join.
• Keep faces, logos and small text off the joins where the drawing allows; a gradient across a joint shows a colour shift more than a busy pattern does.
• Print the set in one run, on panels from the same batch where possible.

For an Accor office project, each ACP panel was printed as its own file, set out so the artwork continued into the next. At DreamDraw, one artwork was split across a run of glass panels that together measure 10 m wide by 2.4 m tall.

More detail is in our guides to multi-panel glass runs and joints and gradients on ACP, and file set-up is covered in our artwork preparation guide.

Working with your fabricator and installer

Many problems on a display project come from the order of work. The usual split:

• Designer or visual merchandising team: artwork, colour references, elevations and lighting details.
• Fabricator, shopfitter or glazier: supplies the material; cuts, routs, drills and polishes it; toughens glass; folds ACP; assembles and installs.
• Sun Studio: checks the material, prints and agrees the sample, prints the run, and packs acrylic with the protective film kept on where it helps. We do not assemble counter units, plinths or stands.
• Assembly partners: if no one on the project is assembling the counter units or plinths, we have partners who can. Ask when you send the brief.

Fabricate first, print second, assemble and install last. Printed glass cannot be cut or drilled, folding printed ACP cracks the ink at the fold, and heat bending printed acrylic has to be discussed first. If an ACP panel must be routed after printing, the artwork needs a tolerance at the cut line, so send the cutting files.

Put printing and sample approval into the retail fit-out programme at design stage. Allow for transport to and from Al Quoz, measure openings on site before the glass is cut (a printed panel cannot be trimmed), and agree who delivers, who collects and when the pieces must be back on site. Tell us how each piece is handled and lit, and whether it sits in a window, because that changes what we recommend. We do not put a lifespan on a print; our guide to how long UV printing lasts sets out what affects it.

Quotation checklist for a display or boutique project

For a display or boutique interior, send:

• The elevation or drawings, with a reference for every panel
• Each panel's width, height and thickness, and the gaps or reveals between panels
• The material and finish of each piece, and who supplies it: you, your fabricator, or us on request
• Which face is seen, and whether any clear piece is reverse printed
• Artwork, with white ink, clear areas, raised areas and varnish on their own layers
• Brand colour references, a physical sample if you have one, and which colours are critical
• The lighting: photos, lighting details, and whether anything is backlit or in a window
• What is fabricated already: cuts, holes, routing, folds, toughening
• Whether you need one of our partners to assemble counter units or plinths
• How each piece is handled and cleaned
• Who delivers and collects, and the date the pieces must be back on site
• Whether the project must stay unnamed

Send the drawings, the panel list and your colour references to info@sunstudio.ae, or call or WhatsApp +971 4 346 7422. We reply with the material we would print each piece on, what the sample should show, and a quotation.

Common questions