Laminated Business Cards – What Are They, and Do I Need Them?

Well presented, quality laminated business cards help you as an owner of a business to create that vital favourable first impression. A poor quality buy clone cards can reflect badly on your business image so choose a print supplier with a good service on offer and you should be fine.

The price of laminated business cards differ hugely amongst online print suppliers. The majority of print suppliers offer a design-your-own service whereby the onus is placed on the purchaser to spot and select a relevant design, complete all the other card details and possibly upload a logo before proceeding to the checkout, even before contact has been made. This suits particular business types such as the mobile hairdressing profession, cabbies, electricians etc. where a ‘quality image’ is often not so important to garner work. A plain, neatly presented business card using a quality design is often all that is required in many cases.

A small to medium enterprise however, as well as any blue chip company, will have a desire to create an instantly recognisable quality brand, that can be produced to cover all company marketing materials. In these instances, brand and colour consistency across the full range of business stationery is vital to preserve the company image.

Laminated business cards can be produced as the first step to switching from the plain single colour or two colour business card, to something that smacks of a quality design. Essentially, it’s produced using 2 sheets of laminate enclosing a plain card front and back. Laminated cards differ from the plastic pouch often used with the typical office laminating machine, which uses a much thicker laminate. Quality card lamination is measured in microns, and is invisible to the eye, the main way to test if the card is laminated is by attempting to rip one in half, or just try rubbing the ink.

Matt lamination, and gloss lamination are the main process offered by suppliers, depending on your design requirement. Some people choose to laminate one side only, and leave the other side of the card plain, but the normal process is to have both sides laminated. Whatever you may hear, it’s actually a fallacy that laminated cards are a problem to write on, just grab a biro and try it! Being able to write on the card has advantages for certain users, such as adding names on membership cards etc. Laminated cards feel much nicer than the plain non laminated version. Another huge bonus is the laminate process helps to enhance colour and your design, due to its reflectivity.

Unfortunately, they can be quite different. If you see prices for laminated cards that seem too good to be true, then it’s possible the supplier may have used a thin card, often not much thicker than paper, and then laminated with a cheaper, thick laminate which feels completely different. At the very least, choose a supplier who’s using 350gsm card, but ideally 400gsm card which will generally give quality results. Where a good quality card has been used, a very thin laminate process will compliment it perfectly.