Gold Foil Boxes.

Yes, with cold foil, which is laid down inline on press and can be overprinted with CMYK. Printing translucent colour over the foil gives rose gold, coloured metallics and gradients that hot foil can't produce.

The trade-off is edge sharpness. Cold foil is a little less crisp than hot stamping, so fine serifs and hairlines are better done hot. On larger runs cold foil also tends to work out cheaper, because it runs with the print.

Hot foil can be stamped and embossed in the same pass, which gives a raised gold mark from one operation. The combination die lays the foil and lifts the image at the same moment, so the metal and the relief line up exactly.

We'd use it on a logo or monogram on the lid. Across a large panel the die gets expensive, so keep the raised area to the mark itself.

Less than most people expect, since foil works by contrast and a box covered in gold tends to look cheap. The eye needs a plain ground next to the metal to read it as precious.

A logo, a border line or a single word in foil against a dark or neutral panel does more than full coverage. If you do want the whole sheet metallic, metallised board is the right route, printed over so only chosen areas stay gold.

Dark matte grounds such as black, navy or deep green under soft-touch laminate give gold the most contrast. Soft-touch has almost no sheen of its own, so the foil is the only thing on the panel catching the light.

Uncoated stocks are the other good match, because hot foil sinks slightly into the fibre and picks up light along its edges. Gloss laminate works too, but the contrast drops when the ground and the foil both shine.

Every size is custom, and foil goes on folding cartons and rigid boxes alike. We build to the inside length, width and depth your product needs, plus room for whatever insert it sits in.

Rigid boxes with a magnetic closure are the usual choice for gift and presentation packs, and the inside of the lid can be printed too. A custom insert holds the product in place so the foiled detail faces the customer when the lid lifts.

Foiled boxes start at 500 units. The foil die is made once for your artwork, and the same die carries through reorders and larger runs of up to 100,000.

Hot foil setup is the same whether you order 500 or 5,000, which is why the unit cost drops noticeably as quantity rises. We'll show a couple of quantity options on the quote so you can compare them.

For any foiled box we'd make a sample first, which is a 5 to 7 business day job. It's the only way to inspect the foil edge up close, looking for a clean line with no halo around small type and serifs.

Once the sample is approved, production runs 7 to 10 business days, or 5 to 7 business days on rush. The sample fee is taken off the production order, and we deliver across the USA.

A small area of hot foil on recyclable board doesn't normally keep the box out of paper recycling. The foil layer is extremely thin and gets screened out when the board is pulped.

Full metallised board is a different case, because the metallic layer covers the whole sheet. If recyclability matters to you, we'd keep the gold to accents on plain board instead of making the entire box metallic.