What our canvases are made of — materials, inks, and stretchers

This guide answers what's actually in our product — the cotton, the wood, the inks, the hardware. We've kept it factual rather than marketing. If you compare canvases across sellers, you can use this as a checklist.

The canvas itself

Material: tightly-woven 100% cotton, 380 gsm.

For comparison: most generic POD canvases are 280–320 gsm polyester or polyester-cotton blends. The cotton at 380 gsm matters for three reasons:

• Drape. Cotton holds tension differently from polyester — the

canvas tightens slowly over the first few days after stretching and stays taut for years. Polyester canvas can sag in humid rooms.

• Texture. The weave is visible from a normal viewing distance,

which gives the print a hand-made, painterly quality. Flat polyester canvases read as photographs of paintings rather than paintings.

• Ink absorption. Cotton absorbs pigment-archival ink into the fibre

rather than sitting on top. The result has slightly softer edges and significantly better fade resistance.

The trade-off: cotton is heavier and more expensive than polyester. An A1 cotton canvas weighs around 1.2 kg, where a polyester A1 might come in under 800 g. The hanging hardware is rated for the heavier weight.

The stretcher bars

Material: kiln-dried European pine, 38 mm depth.

Three properties matter:

• Kiln-dried rather than air-dried — kiln drying brings the moisture

content down to roughly 8%, which is below typical indoor humidity in the UK. The bars don't warp seasonally.

• European pine rather than tropical hardwoods — closer-grown, more

consistent grain, lower carbon footprint, fully FSC-certified.

• 38 mm depth — the canvas sits 38 mm out from the wall, which casts

a clean shadow at most lighting angles. Thinner bars (20–25 mm, common in budget canvases) read as flat and poster-like.

The corners are mitred and stapled, with wooden corner keys included. If the canvas ever loosens (it shouldn't for years), tap the keys gently inwards to re-tension the canvas.

The inks

Material: pigment-archival inks. Specifically: encapsulated mineral pigment dispersed in a low-VOC carrier.

The relevant property is fade resistance, which we measure in two contexts:

• Indoor, indirect daylight: rated 100+ years before visible

fading. This is the figure most printmakers quote.

• Direct sunlight: like all prints, ours fade faster in direct sun

— closer to 5–10 years before noticeable shift. We don't recommend any print medium for a wall that gets direct south-facing sun.

The inks are water-based and low-VOC, which means no off-gassing in the room after unpacking. Pigment inks behave differently from dye inks: they don't bleed when humid, don't yellow with age, and don't require a UV-protective coating.

The finish

Type: matte, low-reflectance.

We don't sell gloss or satin canvases for a specific reason: glass-free matte canvas works under almost any lighting condition without reflections. Gloss canvas looks impressive in print, but in a real room it picks up window reflections, ceiling-light hotspots, and fingerprints. Matte canvas reads as a printed object; gloss canvas reads as a screen.

The matte finish is built into the canvas surface, not sprayed on as a varnish, which means it doesn't crack or flake at the stretched edges over time.

The hardware

Hanging: sawtooth bracket pre-fitted to the centre of the top stretcher bar. Screws and a single picture nail included.

Backing: the canvas is wrapped around the stretcher and stapled at the back. No paper backing — leaving the back open lets the canvas breathe in changing humidity and prevents mould forming in damp rooms.

Edges: 38 mm of canvas wraps around the stretcher depth. The artwork is printed onto the front face only; the wrapped edges are a neutral white. This is intentional — the edges read as a clean frame under most lighting, and the artwork doesn't have to be cropped or distorted to wrap around the edges.

Origin

Every canvas in our catalogue is printed and assembled in the United Kingdom. The cotton is sourced in the EU, the pine is FSC-certified European, and the inks are manufactured in the UK. Nothing transits through long international supply chains.

What this means for the buyer

If you've ordered canvas before and found it sagged, warped, or faded unevenly within a year, the difference is almost always one of:

• Polyester canvas instead of cotton
• Air-dried stretcher bars instead of kiln-dried
• Dye-based inks instead of pigment

Those three substitutions cut the unit cost by roughly 40% and the lifespan by roughly 90%.