Label Planet
Things To Think About – Choosing The Best Adhesive For Fabric Labels
If you need to label fabrics, you'll need to take extra care to make sure you get the best adhesive for the job.
The adhesives used to make our products are either “Permanent” or “Removable” with a variety of strengths on offer within these two groups. Permanent adhesives are designed to create an adhesive bond that will hold a label firmly in place for as long as possible, whereas removable adhesives are designed to hold a label in place for a shorter time (i.e. while the label is needed) before removing cleanly and easily.
The problem with picking the perfect adhesive for fabrics is that these materials tend to make it rather challenging for a successful adhesive bond to form. Fabrics tend to have more unusual or more varied surfaces, which offer less surface area for an adhesive to bond with – and that’s before you consider that some fabrics will also be highly flexible, which can mean that the material will flex and stretch beneath the label and make it very difficult for an adhesive bond to be effective.
We recommend thinking of our adhesives as sitting on a scale (from extremely strong permanent adhesives to extremely light removable adhesives), deciding what sort of adhesive strength you need, and then choosing an adhesive that sits one step higher on the scale to ensure you get the strength you need. For example:
Example One: Name Badges At An Event
The Labels Should: Stay on for the duration of the event but remove cleanly from people’s clothes once the event is over
The Adhesion You Want: Removable Adhesive
The Adhesive You Should Use: Standard Permanent Adhesive
Example Two: Product Information On Fabric Samples
The Labels Should: Stay on permanently so that each sample can be identified quickly and easily
The Adhesion You Want: Permanent Adhesive
The Adhesive You Should Use: High Tack Adhesive
To take a look at all of the adhesive options we supply, please visit our List Of Adhesives page to find short descriptions of each of the adhesives used on our products, along with links to the range page for each product so you can find out more or to buy.
[Of course, if you’re looking for fabric labels that will survive being used on clothing as name labels or product information labels, then you’ll need a more specialised product with a specially formulated adhesive that can survive repeat trips through the extremely challenging environment of a washing machine. In this case, we recommend visiting our Name Labels website (www.stikins.co.uk) to view our two name label products: Stikins ® and Trons ®]