Reviews
Part of Getting printmaking workspaces right the first time
Sealing, shelving and containment: choosing printmaking workspace materials
How to choose: choosing floor seals, shelving, containment and consumables for a print room, plus how to read waste rules and green marketing claims accurately.
What to take away
- Pick materials by what they resist, not by what they look like. Solvent, water and pigment each attack different things.
- Non-porous beats attractive everywhere liquid travels.
- Whether a spent bath counts as hazardous waste is a legal question with a written answer, not a matter of judgment.
- Environmental claims on studio products have a federal guideline behind them. Vague ones usually fail it.
Match the material to the attack
Three things damage a print room: water, solvent and pigment. Water swells and warps. Solvent softens, dissolves and lifts finishes. Pigment stains anything porous permanently.
Material vs. water, solvent, stain
Water
- Sealed vinyl sheet
- Good
- High pressure laminate
- Good
- Toughened glass
- Good
- Varnished timber
- Poor
- Bare MDF
- Poor
Solvent
- Sealed vinyl sheet
- Fair
- High pressure laminate
- Good
- Toughened glass
- Good
- Varnished timber
- Poor
- Bare MDF
- Poor
Pigment stain
- Sealed vinyl sheet
- Good
- High pressure laminate
- Good
- Toughened glass
- Good
- Varnished timber
- Fair
- Bare MDF
- Poor
That gives a simple test for any candidate material. Will it swell? Will it dissolve? Will it stain? Sealed vinyl, high pressure laminate, glass, stainless steel and coated concrete pass all three. Untreated timber, MDF edges, plasterboard and most carpets fail at least two.
For shelving, powder-coated steel outlasts particle board by a wide margin in a damp room, and it can be wiped rather than sanded.
Water
- Sealed vinyl sheet
- Good
- High pressure laminate
- Good
- Toughened glass
- Good
- Varnished timber
- Poor
- Bare MDF
- Poor
Solvent
- Sealed vinyl sheet
- Fair
- High pressure laminate
- Good
- Toughened glass
- Good
- Varnished timber
- Poor
- Bare MDF
- Poor
Pigment stain
- Sealed vinyl sheet
- Good
- High pressure laminate
- Good
- Toughened glass
- Good
- Varnished timber
- Fair
- Bare MDF
- Poor
Fair in that table means it survives an immediate wipe but not a puddle left overnight. Test any new finish on an offcut with the exact cleaner you use, because a coating rated for household solvents can still soften under a citrus-based ink wash.
Containment and sealing
- Seal the floor and coved edges if the budget allows. A flat seam is where liquid finds its way under.
- Put a bunded tray under every liquid store, sized to hold the largest container's full volume.
- Use screw-top containers, not flip lids, for anything you carry.
- Keep original labels. A decanted bottle with no label is a future disposal problem.
Recoat a floor seal before it wears through in the standing area, because a patch applied over worn coating traps pigment at the join and never looks clean again.
Containment and sealing checklist
- Seal floor and coved edges
- Bunded tray under every liquid store
- Screw-top containers, not flip lids
- Keep original labels on containers
- Recoat floor seal before it wears through
Waste is a defined category, not an opinion
Printmakers often ask whether a spent bath is hazardous. The federal definition of hazardous waste is a written test involving listed wastes and characteristics rather than a judgment call, and it is worth reading once so the vocabulary makes sense when you call a disposal service or a municipal collection point.
The practical consequence for a home studio is to hold spent liquid in a labeled container until you have an answer, and to keep different chemistries in different containers so that the answer is possible to give. Mixed waste is the expensive kind.
Reading green claims on studio products
Non-toxic, eco, solvent-free and biodegradable appear on a lot of printmaking products, and they carry very different amounts of information. The Federal Trade Commission publishes guides for the use of environmental marketing claims that treat unqualified general claims as difficult to substantiate and expect specific, qualified statements instead.
Applied to a shelf of ink, that means a product saying free of a named solvent tells you more than a product saying natural. Ask what the claim excludes, then check the safety data sheet, which has to describe the actual composition and hazards.
Our plan for laying out the room sets the zones these materials fit into, and our guide to storing materials in a house covers the containers and conditions once everything is bought.
