Gone are the days of consumers looking at magazines or websites and trying to mimic the same pale grey walls, hand-scraped floors or white Venetian blinds.
Instead, an era of true customisation and unbridled creativity is at our door. And it’s propelled by wide format digital printing, a technology that allows businesses, consumers, and other end-users to design and create everything from one-of-a-kind wall coverings to personalised printed blinds, curtains, cushions and much, much more.
We checked in with Jennifer Castoldi, the chief creative director of Trendease International – an online resource that provides cutting-edge and competitive design information to readers in more than 170 countries – to see exactly how this technology is changing the design and print landscape across the globe. Jennifer will also be giving a presentation on this subject at an upcoming webinar hosted by HP on 14th January 2021.
So, what advice would she give to those PSPs looking to pivot into the décor market?
Digital print technology is growing. It opens up the colourful, diverse interior décor market for more customers and therefore more businesses. Due to the Covid pandemic people are now spending much more time at home and looking at how to improve their surroundings. Even when making rare visits into the office space, the whole landscape is changing as businesses adapt to the new normal. With the implementation of safety screens and partitions there are even more surfaces opened up to print.
“Still, the most common application is to use wide format digital printing for wallcoverings, either for an entire room or for a feature wall,” Castoldi says. “With digital print, the only limitation is imagination. Thanks to HP’s Latex technology, you can safely print onto almost any surface. I think it is inspirational to understand what the possibilities are. A lot of people don’t realise you can print on things like wood, glass or even leather."
With its sustainability credentials, the quality of output it creates, immediate proofing, fast design-to-production time and the lucrative projects it opens up, digital printing can also be seamlessly combined with traditional print technologies.
“Any surface is game,” continues Castoldi. “The current trends of printed wall canvases and wallcoverings are just the tip of the iceberg; PSPs should definitely not be conservative with their ideas.”
By embracing digital printing technology, you can also benefit from much faster turnaround, even on truly personalised designs, plus easily scale up or scale down output to meet demand. It enables PSPs – and other interested businesses such as design agencies – to offer customised short runs and exclusive collections with no worries about stock risk, and can add a valuable new revenue stream in these challenging times.
Castoldi says that HP digital printing is revolutionary in another way, too, as it is compatible with some 2,000+ different substrates. “Most people are trying to tap into some way of not being wasteful,” she says. “One HP material is even made from sea debris that is collected after being washed up along the shores. Another is made from recycled plastic bottles. These material innovations are embracing the circular economy.”
And with so many of us spending so much time at home, Castoldi says the personalised décor market has skyrocketed. People are looking to surround themselves with colours, textiles and designs that make their day better.
We’re all hoping 2021 offers a fresh start — and HP large-format digital printing is a revolutionary, yet accessible, way to accomplish that for your clients and for your business.
Jennifer Castoldi will be sharing her learnings and divulging the latest trends within the décor market in a recorded interview during the free webinar hosted by HP on Jan. 14 at 9 a.m. UK time/10 a.m. CET time.
Click here to sign up for the webinar.
You can also learn more about the infinite possibilities in our guide to HP Large-Format Printing Solutions for Decorative Applications, which can be downloaded here.
