Laminating Your Artwork – Four Reasons For Artists to Laminate

Have you ever dumped a cup of coffee onto your finished professional artist portfolio, or accidentally spilt water onto your finalized watercolor painting? Well trust me, you are not the first, nor will you be the last! There are many ways that all of your precious artwork, designs, portfolios, and photographs can be ruined accidentally. This no longer has to be the case! For years, professional artists have been laminating their end products for safety and longevity. Here are some top reasons for using lamination to protect your creative craftsmanship.

1. Laminated art pieces last longer: There is no doubt that a laminated piece of artwork can withstand the test of time by adding countless years to your favorite pieces. Proper laminating can prevent fading from sunlight or other bright lights, destructive Ultra-Violet rays, fingerprints and smudging from simple handling, pollutants, and even the vapors from smoke, cleaning solutions, and other harmful atmospheric elements. If you truly care about a piece of artwork, and choose not to frame it, the only real way to ensure its safety is to laminate the prized image.
2. Laminating is cheaper: Sometimes the sheer cost of framing a favorite piece of artwork to hang on your wall can be very daunting. So why not simply laminate it for less than half of the cost? Laminating your favorite works will allow you to have more prized works hanging protected on your wall than only one or two framed pieces for the same cost.
3. Laminating is quick: Sometimes framing can not only be expensive, but it can take a lot longer to frame than to simply laminate and trim, especially if you have to send your artwork off to some distant place to be professionally framed, which, in most cases, takes days, if not weeks, to get back to you. Instead, why not settle for laminating your works and beautify your home in a few short hours instead?
4. Laminating provides a solid, professional look to your portfolio: If you are an artist who is looking for a gallery show, a prospective job, or a more professional portfolio, laminating can help you achieve that professional look and feel needed to land you the floor space or that dream job. A portfolio is the single most important tool for any artist in any situation, and having yours laminated shows that you care about your artwork as much as you do about how you present yourself. Set yourself above the rest with the quick, cheap, and easy style of laminating.

These are only a few of the wide variety of reasons an artist should choose to laminate their artwork. Two things to keep in mind: first, be sure to use cold lamination when working with precious artwork as heat laminators can damage if not utterly destroy your prized works. Second, lamination is permanent as it literally sticks to both sides of the finalized piece of art. So, next time you are thinking about spending a few hundred or thousand dollars to frame your artwork, look into lamination.