Why Giclée Prints Are Worth The Investment
I get asked about this more than almost anything else. Someone falls for a piece, then they see the price next to the giclée version and pause. Why does it cost more than the poster print they could grab online? Fair question. Here's the honest answer.
A giclée isn't really a "print" in the way most people picture one. The word (it's French, roughly "to spray") refers to a proper archival process — pigment inks, not the dye-based stuff that fades to a sad ghost of itself after a couple of summers by a sunny window. Those pigments are rated to hold their colour for a hundred years or more. You're not buying a copy that'll need replacing. You're buying something that outlives the sofa, the wall colour, probably the house.
Then there's the paper. Cheap prints use cheap stock, and you can feel it the second you pick one up — thin, a bit shiny, no soul to it. A giclée goes onto heavyweight cotton rag or fine art paper with actual texture and weight. It catches light the way the original does. When people see one in person for the first time, the reaction is usually a quiet "oh" — because it doesn't look printed. It looks like art.
And that's the part I care about most. The resolution on these is high enough to hold every bit of detail from the original: the grain of a brushstroke, the soft edge where one colour bleeds into another, the tiny marks that make a painting feel alive rather than manufactured. A standard print flattens all of that. A giclée keeps it.
I won't pretend it's the cheapest option, because it isn't. But think about what you're actually paying for. Cheaper prints often work out more expensive over time once you've replaced the faded ones, reframed, and still ended up with something that never quite looked right. A giclée is a one-and-done. Frame it properly, keep it out of direct blazing sunlight, and it'll look as good in twenty years as it does on day one.
There's also something worth saying about supporting the work directly. When you buy a proper print from an artist, you're backing the person who made the thing you love — not a warehouse churning out mass copies. It matters. It's what lets the next piece get made.
So is it worth it? If you want something to fill a gap on the wall for a year, probably not — grab the cheap version, no judgement. But if you've found a piece you genuinely want to live with, one you'll still notice and enjoy years from now, a giclée is the version that does it justice.
You can see the giclée prints available over at shannonsait.co.uk. Come and have a look
