Painted Edges, Gilding, and Patterned Edge Book Printing
At QinPrinting, we offer an array of edging options. We can paint a single colour onto your book’s edges to bring a stunning and high-class effect to your book’s appearance. Gilding—in which we apply coloured metallic foil to the edges of the pages—is a traditional and classy choice. The “gilding” needn’t only be gold. We offer silver, copper, bronze and a rainbow of dazzling foil colours from which you can choose. How about a custom pattern or image sprayed onto the edge of your book pages? With this technique, you can even choose a unique pattern for each side.
Whether block colour painted, gilded in coloured metallic foil, or customized with a pattern of your choice, these exciting techniques can elevate any book into a work of art.
Painted, Gilded, and Patterned Edges Options
Whichever style of edge enhancement you choose, we can offer you a range of options. What you decide to include in your book design will depend on the book’s content, binding style, the rest of the artwork or your company branding, and, of course, your budget. So, let’s look at what’s on offer.
Option 1: Edge painted with custom colours: this is the solid colour or gradient colour option. We can make custom colours using the CMYK or Pantone systems.
Option 2: Custom edge patterns: these could be abstract, illustrative, or represent your branding, logo, or company name.
Option 3: Luxury gilded metallic edges: You’ll have seen gilded edging on old bibles and works of poetry and literature. But it needn’t be gold. You can choose any colour you like from our extensive range.
Unlike most other printing companies that offer these services only for hardcover books, with QinPrinting’s state-of-the-art technology and skilled edging experts, you can apply these effects to either hardcover or paperback books as you need. Size is also no object, we’ll edge your books beautifully whether they’re large or small. We can also change out the edging—say between blue and yellow painted edge versions—in a single run. So, for example, if you were printing 1000 copies of your novel, you could choose to have 500 of them with blue painted edging and 500 with yellow.
If you have a series of books—such as a trilogy, quartet, or quintet, for example—we can spray paint a single image across all the books so that each volume has a section of the image which is completed when they are aligned side by side.
Applications for Painted Edges, Gilded Edges, and Patterned Edges
As we can apply these techniques to either paperback or hardcover bindings, you can use them to excellent effect across a range of genres. These are the most popular book types for which our customers have used special edging effects:
Other clients have used these techniques on non-book products, too, with superb results. These products include Tarot cards, oracle cards, game cards, thank you cards, business cards, postcards, notepads and more.
Special Edges Artwork Tips
The quality of your artwork reproduction is always important, especially when you’re adding special features like painted, gilded, or patterned edges. With that in mind, here are a few useful tips to help you when you’re preparing your files for the printer.
If you choose gilded edges or solid colour painted edges, you don’t need to prepare the artwork files. Just let us know which CMYK or Pantone colors you’d like and we’ll see to the rest.
If you decide to paint the edges with images, illustrations, or a logo, you’ll need to account for the “bleed zone” when preparing your layouts. The bleed must be 3 mm (0.125 inches).
So, when calculating your book edges length, you need 0.125 inch bleed + book width + book length + book width + 0.125 inch, so it will wrap around the entire edge.
The width calculation is 0.125 inch bleed + book thickness + 0.125 inch bleed.
If you choose painted edges for your book, remember that you can’t use bled to the edge rich colours on the interior pages. It would interfere with the painted edge results. In other words, edging can only be applied if the pages have a white margin inside.
If you’re working with a professional designer to create your files, they should understand what’s needed to make everything “print ready”. But if you’re working with design software yourself for the first time, these are the vital tips to remember before you submit your files. Still, our team of experts will always manually check all your files before we go to press. If we find any issues, we’ll let you know and help you resolve them. We won’t print your book or other product until we’re sure we’ll get a perfect result.
QinPrinting Rated Excellent
Nelson Zhao was my contact throughout, and he answered every technical question directly. When I asked about ink limits for Japan Color 2001 Coated, he recommended 290% total ink coverage for my shadow-heavy images and explained why. He offered two proofing options: a press test run of 8 pages, and inkjet hard proofs at $1 per page. I used both across three proof rounds. When a shipment of proofs came back wrong, it was corrected promptly.
Their designer checked every file before production, and Nelson explained each step of the process: PDF proofs, invoice, payment options with the fees laid out, production, and freight. He gave honest answers on timing, including the real odds of a customs inspection, rather than just reassurance.
Ten advance copies came by air, and the full run arrived in 41 boxes right on schedule. The books are beautiful, and the photographs are reproduced accurately.
I recommend QinPrinting to any photographer or publisher who cares about color, care and professionalism.
My commission very satisfactory and excellent
The quality was exactly as promised and the shipping came undamaged and secure.
I plan on continuing using QinPrinting for my future books and various printing needs.
Let's Talk!
If you’re keen to elevate your book design by adding one of these special edging effects — and only the finest product and unbeatable customer service will do — we should talk. Get in touch today to chat through your needs or to ask for a no-obligation quote. We can’t wait to help you make your next book into a stunning work of art!