Printing onto Darker Substrates 🌑
Perhaps you've tried printing onto a dark fabric with regular water-based inks and found the print appears transparent or less vibrant, even showing the underlying colour of the substrate. Well, there's a reason and answer to this!
Why does this happen?
The reason behind this transparent or ghosting effect is regular Waterbased Inks have a lower pigment concentration compared to super opaque inks. This lower pigment content means that the ink may not fully cover the substrate, allowing the base colour to show through. Additionally, water-based inks tend to have a thinner consistency, which can contribute to less opacity.
Super Opaque Inks - The Solution!
Introducing Super Opaque Ink - an ink range specifically formulated with a higher pigment concentration and thicker consistency, allowing it to effectively block out the background colour and provide a solid, opaque layer of ink ✨
Using our Hunt The Moon Super Opaque range ensures that your printed design appears vivid and vibrant, maintaining its true colours without being affected by the base colour of the substrate. The opacity of super-opaque ink allows for excellent contrast and visibility, making it a preferred choice for achieving striking prints on darker or coloured backgrounds.
Super Opaque Inks - used and loved by Screen Printers!
Our Super Opaque Ink is well-loved by our community, for several reasons! The first is it opens a whole new door into Screen Printing, allowing printing on darker fabrics and obtaining crispier results. Secondly, you can still mix and create custom colours with our Core Eco Water-based Screen Printing Inks! This allows for some great results, for example, why not try and create a Metallic Super Opaque Rose ink? 👀
The Discharge Method
This method involves using a discharge agent, which fun fact, is what we used to do before we used our Super Opaque Inks! But first, what do we mean by discharge agent?
A discharge agent is a chemical formulation used to remove or discharge the colour of a dyed fabric during the printing process, which in most cases is a black t-shirt for example. The result? It breaks down / bleaches the dye molecules present in the fabric, allowing for Regular Ink to be used. If interested, we previously used Jacquard deColourant Discharge Paste.
Experimenting with Discharge
For a cool effect, why not use it on it's own? Here's an awesome video by our friends at dewerstone Outdoor Lifestyle. The paste prints almost totally clear and then once the heat is applied the colour just starts to strip out of the fabric.
Imagine the below combined with the Hunt The Moon Super Opaque White, it would be amazingly white!
