kraft Pillow Boxes.

Print sits muted on kraft, because the brown fibre shows through the ink and shifts every colour toward a darker, warmer shade. Bold one-colour marks, line drawings and type read well. Photography and fine gradients lose their detail.

Black, deep green, navy and dark red hold up best on unbleached board. If your logo has to match a precise brand colour, a white SBS pillow box is the safer route.

Foil gives some of the strongest contrast you can get on kraft, since bright metal sits right on top of a flat brown surface. A small foil logo is an inexpensive way to make a kraft box look finished.

Debossing is the other finish we like on this stock. Pressing the mark into uncoated fibre leaves a clean relief with no ink at all, which fits the plain material well.

Kraft is unbleached, so its shade depends on the pulp that went into each run of board. Two orders can come out a touch lighter or darker, and recycled kraft varies more than virgin stock.

We can't match kraft to a fixed swatch the way we can match a PMS ink. Designs built on dark one-colour marks cope with that shift easily, and pale inks placed on the brown are where the difference shows.

It works, but recycled kraft is slightly less stiff than virgin board, so we step the caliper up to keep the curve from sagging. Our standard kraft range is 18 to 24pt, and on recycled stock we'd lean toward the heavier end.

For a documented claim, recycled kraft comes with a stated post-consumer percentage. All of these grades are unbleached and go into ordinary paper recycling when no lamination is added.

Our two stock sizes are 4 × 3 × 1 inches and 6 × 4 × 1.5 inches, and most favours fit one or the other. We can cut any other size to your measurements.

Contents still need to be flat or close to it, whatever the board colour. Soaps, jewellery, wrapped sweets and folded cards sit well, while chunky or square-cornered items push the curved ends open.

Yes, plenty of makers do, and it's the lowest cost way to put a mark on the box. We print a one-colour logo on the run, then you add a rubber stamp, a kraft tag on twine or a sticker seal at the packing table.

Tags and sticker seals can change for each scent, event or season without touching the printed boxes, which keeps one box design working across a whole range.

Kraft pillow boxes start at 500 units per order. The boxes arrive flat, so 500 of them take up very little storage space in a small workshop or a spare room.

Artwork and dieline help are included free, so a simple stamp-style logo can be set up for one-colour print without a separate design fee.

Plan on 7 to 10 business days of production from the day you approve the proof. Our rush option cuts that to 5 to 7 business days when a market or event date is fixed.

If you'd like to see how your ink reads on the brown board first, a printed sample is made in 5 to 7 business days. Its cost is taken off your production order.