Foam Board Printing London
020 3375 6674 info@silverimagelondon.com Open 24 hours, 7 days a week — call or email and we will tell you what is possible today.
Rigid Foamex boards from A4 up to 240cm on 3mm or 5mm PVC for exhibitions, signage, and presentations, produced same-day at our 24/7 London facility. Same-day and overnight courier delivery is available across London, with frequent deliveries to the City, West End, Canary Wharf and Central London — delivered flat to your shell scheme or office.
Every job is quoted on its specification. Send us yours and we will come back with a firm figure.
| Method | Construction | Shape | Turnaround | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mounted print | Printed on paper, laminated to the board | Rectangular formats | Same day | Exhibitions, presentations, easel display, short-term signage |
| Direct-printed | Printed straight onto the Foamex, no paper layer | Contour cut to any shape | Same day | Longer-life display, shaped signage, anything handled repeatedly |
Both are same-day products. Without a paper layer there is nothing to lift, bubble or delaminate, so direct-printed boards hold up better on work that gets moved and re-used. Shaped boards are where the difference shows most: most London printers send contour cutting away and quote two to three days for it. We cut to shape the same day.
Artwork specifications
Bleed, safe margins, colour, resolution, file format
Foamex rewards clean files — preflight your artwork for free before it reaches the flatbed.
| Requirement | What we need | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Bleed | 5–10 mm on every edge | |
| Safe margin | Text and logos 5 mm inside the trim | The artwork itself prints full bleed to the finished edge. It is only type and logos that need the clearance. Where you supply bleed, measure the 5 mm from the trim line, not from the edge of the bleed. |
| Colour mode | CMYK, not RGB | Bright RGB blues and greens sit outside the CMYK gamut and print duller than they look on screen. Send Pantone references for brand colours. |
| Resolution at final size | 300 dpi at the finished size | Measured on the printed piece, not in the file. Scale it back to check: a file built at 1:10 and 300 dpi lands at 30 dpi once printed full size. |
| File format | PDF preferred — but send what you have | We accept virtually any artwork format and check every file in-house before production. If anything needs adjusting we will tell you immediately, before we print. |
| Fonts | Outlined | Outlined removes any font substitution risk on an overnight job. |
| Images | Embedded in the PDF | Linked images that did not travel with the file are a common cause of a job stalling. |
| Transparency | Supported — no need to flatten | Flattening by hand often causes the white boxes and colour shifts it was meant to avoid. |
| Contour cutting | Supply the cut path as a separate spot-colour layer | A shape drawn on the artwork layer cannot be cut to. The path has to be a closed vector on its own layer. |
Before you upload
- Export a print-ready PDF, vector wherever possible
- Convert fonts to outlines
- Extend backgrounds into the bleed
- Keep important content inside the safe margin
- Check the resolution at the finished size, not in the file
- Check the page size matches the finished size, or state the scale you built at
Send the file even where there is doubt about it. We check bleed, resolution, embedded fonts and page size before anything goes on press, and where a fix is small it is usually just done. A two-minute reply at 9pm is faster than a re-export at 7am.
What turns a same-day job into a next-day one is almost never the printing. It is a question that has to go back to you and sit unanswered — artwork built at the wrong finished size, a logo supplied at screen resolution, or type running off the trim with no bleed behind it. Getting the six points above right removes nearly every one of those.
Mounted or direct-printed, and why the difference matters
Make a professional impact with our rigid Foamex board printing. We print high-resolution graphics directly onto 3mm or 5mm foam boards (PVC), creating a lightweight yet durable display perfect for easels and shell scheme walls. Because the boards are rigid they go by van, which is why the regular runs are short ones: presentation boards to the campus offices around King’s Cross, pitch boards into London Bridge, and conference sets to Victoria for meetings that start before the building fills up. This is the #1 choice for exhibitors at ExCeL London and The Business Design Centre who need signage that stands up straight without curling.
Two sets repeat. Galleries and design studios in Chelsea use mounted boards for captions and private-view displays; offices around Paddington send presentation boards to be printed and mounted the same day.
Foamex boards are produced two different ways, and the difference matters more than it sounds. Mounted prints are printed on paper and laminated to the board — produced same day, rectangular, and the standard choice for exhibitions, presentations and easel display. Direct-printed boards have the graphic printed straight onto the Foamex with no paper layer at all, so there is nothing to lift, bubble or delaminate over time, and the board can be contour cut to any shape rather than a rectangle. Both are same-day products, including the shaped cutting — which is unusual: shaped foam board is normally a two to three day job in London.
Because these boards are rigid they cannot be rolled. They travel flat by van, delivered to your stand or office rather than sent by post — a rolled tube would put a permanent crease through the board.
Q&A
We produce foam boards 24/7. For urgent London orders, we can print and dispatch within hours via dedicated courier to your office or venue.
Yes. We are specialists in exhibition logistics. We courier rigid boards directly to ExCeL, Olympia, and the Business Design Centre.
Foamex is a durable, compressed PVC suitable for multiple uses. Foam Core is lighter but more fragile. We recommend Foamex for professional displays.
Yes. We offer double-sided printing on 5mm Foamex, which is perfect for hanging signs or free-standing displays in retail environments.
Often ordered with this
Send us the job
Tell us the size, the quantity and when you need it. We come back with a firm price, and we check the artwork before anything goes on press.
Open 24 hours, 7 days a week. Same-day and overnight delivery across London.
SAP Business Network member registered member
Part of our Signs & Banners range — browse the full category for rigid boards, vinyl, exhibition graphics and outdoor signage, or see Print & Documents for booklets, business cards and document printing.
