Types of Canvas Finishes
I think one of the most beautiful ways to cover your house in your photography is with canvas prints. For starters, canvas is generally pretty inexpensive. So it won’t cost you a ton to print plenty of your images.
But, canvases are also really lightweight and durable. I tend to move quite frequently and I don’t have any problems taking all of my canvas prints with me. They’re also really easy to clean. I basically just wipe them down with a wet washcloth every few months and they’re back to looking brand new.
But, if you’re trying to purchase canvas prints, then you need to know everything you can about canvas finishes because the difference between canvas finishes could mean the difference between you loving your canvas and hating it.
There are a number of different canvas finishes, from vintage to matte to glossy. To make it even more confusing, different print shops offer different types of canvas finishes. For this article, we will walk you through all of the canvas finishes that are available through CanvasHQ, which is one of our favorite canvas print shops.
Matte
One of the simplest canvas finishes is matte. A canvas print that is finished with matte will be the lowest glare. This is important if you’re planning on hanging your print in a very bright area of your home. It’s also important if your image contains a lot of high contrast, or if it contains very dark colors.
Matte is one of the most popular canvas finishes for portrait photography, baby photography, and wedding photography. This is because matte, out of all the other canvas finishes, helps to preserve detail the best.
Matte isn’t the only canvas finish that works well for these types of photos though. In the next section, I’ll walk you through the differences between matte vs. semi-gloss.
Semi-Gloss
If you have a canvas print in your home, chances are, it is likely a semi-gloss. A semi-gloss canvas catches enough light to make your image look as if it is an oil painting, but it doesn’t catch so much light that you lose a lot of details of your image.
People will also use a semi-gloss finish for their portrait photography when they are looking for a more traditional canvas look.
Whereas a matte photo intensifies the color of the image, and a gloss photo intensifies the depth of an image, a semi-gloss photo does a little bit of both. Semi-gloss is likely the most popular of all the canvas finishes for this reason.
Glossy
The difference between semi-gloss vs. glossy really depends upon the printing studio you go with. If you choose to print with CanvasHQ, you can expect your glossy image to make all of your bright colors pop.
For this reason, a lot of people will use a glossy finish for art reproductions.
Whereas some canvas printing studios will use low-quality canvas finishes that mean a lot of the detail is lost in your photos, CanvasHQ specifically engineered their glossy finish to maintain image clarity and sharp resolution.
Iridescent
This may be one of the least popular canvas finishes, although it shouldn’t be. An iridescent canvas comes with a pearlescent luster finish. The purpose of an iridescent finish is to showcase light in a photo.
For this reason, the iridescent finish is perfect for images of a landscape during golden hour or anything with bright neons.
One way I use an iridescent finish is to bring my old family portraits to life. It might sound a little wild, but the results are actually quite pleasing to the eye.
Vintage
This is yet another one of the canvas finishes that gets looked over really frequently, but it’s fun to use. A vintage canvas finish really makes your image look as if it was taken in a bygone era.
CanvasHQ likens a vintage finish to a flour sack. It replicates all natural fibers and works really well for low-resolution shots of bright colors like flowers or desert landscapes.
