Giclée (pronounced zhee-CLAY) is the gold standard in fine art printing. The word comes from the French verb gicler, meaning to spray — a fitting description for a process that builds images from millions of microscopic ink droplets applied with extraordinary precision.
How giclée differs from a standard print
The difference begins with the ink. Standard inkjet printers use dye-based inks, which are vibrant but fade quickly when exposed to light. Giclée printing uses pigment-based inks — stable, lightfast compounds that bond to the substrate rather than sitting on top of it. The result is artwork that retains its original colour for decades rather than years.
Then there is the paper. At Abstract House, every giclée print is produced on a heavyweight, museum-grade cotton rag paper used by the world's finest art publishers.
The texture is subtle but perceptible, giving prints a surface quality that photographs genuinely cannot capture. Our studio uses a 12-colour pigment ink system, significantly wider than the 4-colour CMYK process used in commercial printing. More colours mean more nuance: the deep oceanic blues in our seascape collection, the warm earthy browns in the brown wall art collection, the luminous pale tones in our neutral art collection — all reproduced with a fidelity that makes each print feel like an encounter with the original.
Why it matters to you as a buyer
Because art is a long-term investment of space, emotion, and money. A print that fades, yellows, or loses contrast within five years is not art — it is a temporary decoration. Giclée printing, when done properly with archival materials, produces work that can last 100 years or more under normal display conditions.
At Abstract House, our prints are produced in-house at our London studio, giving us direct control over every stage of the process. We do not outsource printing. This matters because the final quality of a giclée depends as much on the expertise of the printer as on the equipment.
How to verify giclée quality when you are shopping
Look for these markers: pigment (not dye) inks, a paper weight above 250gsm, acid-free substrates, and in-house production. Be cautious of vague claims like "fine art print" without specifics — this can mean anything from a home inkjet to a genuine studio giclée.
At Abstract House, every product page specifies exactly what you are getting: the paper weight, the ink system, the framing materials. Because we believe that knowing what goes into a piece is part of appreciating it.
If you are buying art that you want to live with for a lifetime, giclée is not a luxury. It is the baseline.
