Fired at 800 degrees · Permanent

Printing on Ceramic Tiles and Tableware

Anything printed on a tile with ordinary ink will fade in sunlight and come off with a scouring pad. We print with ceramic pigments and fire the result into the glaze at eight hundred degrees, which makes the image part of the tile: dishwasher-proof, frost-proof, scratch-resistant and unaffected by ultraviolet for decades. The studio produces single commemorative tiles, kitchen splashbacks, bathroom murals matched to a specific wall, restoration replacements for missing historic tiles, and printed tableware for restaurants.

What We Print Send Artwork

Blue and yellow patterned ceramic wall tiles

Historic blue and white tile panel on a church wall

About us

A Ceramicist and a Printer in the Same Room

The studio was set up by a ceramicist who could fire anything but could not print it well, and a printer who could reproduce anything on paper and had no idea why it turned brown in a kiln. Ceramic colour is difficult precisely because it changes: pigments shift during firing, glaze chemistry moves the hue, and a tile that looks correct coming out of the printer can emerge from the kiln a different colour entirely. Getting it right took two years of test tiles, and those tests are still the basis of everything we quote.

The process is straightforward once it is understood. Artwork is converted to ceramic pigment separations, printed onto a transfer with the correct pigment loading, applied to a glazed tile and fired in a decorating kiln at around eight hundred degrees, where the glaze softens and takes the pigment into itself. What comes out is not a coating but a fired ceramic surface. Larger work is printed directly onto tiles with a flatbed ceramic printer and fired the same way.

Colour is proofed before any run. Every commission of more than a few tiles gets a fired proof of the critical areas on the actual tile body being used, because the same file on a matt biscuit, a bright white glaze and a warm cream body produces three visibly different results. Clients see the proof in daylight before we print the rest. That step costs a day and prevents almost every complaint that ceramic printing is otherwise prone to.

Advantages

Why Fired Printing Is Worth the Extra Days

Six differences between a fired ceramic image and anything printed on top of a tile.

The Image Is Inside the Glaze

Firing at eight hundred degrees softens the glaze so that the ceramic pigment sinks into it and becomes part of the surface. The result cannot be scratched off with a knife, does not fade in direct sunlight, survives dishwashers, oven heat, frost and cleaning chemicals, and will look the same in thirty years. Printed vinyl, UV-cured ink and sublimation coatings all sit on top of the tile and all fail eventually — in a splashback within a couple of years, on a sunlit terrace within one summer.

Colour Proofed on the Real Tile

Ceramic pigments change during firing, and the tile body and glaze shift them further, so a screen proof is close to meaningless. We print and fire a proof of the critical areas on the exact tile being used and send it to the client to look at in daylight, on the wall where it will live if possible. Adjustments are made to the separations rather than to the client's expectations. For murals we proof a full tile from the busiest part of the image rather than a colour chart.

Murals Set Out to the Wall

A mural is designed around the actual wall: socket positions, a window reveal, the line of a worktop, the height of a splashback and the grout width all change where the image can be cut. We work from the client's measurements or take our own, produce a setting-out drawing showing every tile numbered, and print so that no important detail falls in a grout line or behind a shelf. Tiles arrive numbered on the back with a fixing plan any tiler can follow.

Restoration Matching

Replacing missing tiles in a historic panel means matching a colour that has aged, a glaze with a particular crazing and a body that is no longer manufactured. We photograph and colour-measure surviving tiles, match the pigment mix through fired samples, source or make a body of the right dimension and finish, and can age the surface so a replacement does not shout against its neighbours. Conservation work is documented so that a future restorer can tell exactly which tiles are original.

Small Runs Are Normal

Industrial ceramic printers want thousands of square metres. We are set up for one tile, twelve tiles or a hundred, which is what most kitchens, bathrooms, house names, memorial pieces and restaurant orders actually need. There is no origination charge beyond the proof, no minimum order, and repeat orders reprint from the stored separations so that a broken tile can be replaced in two years and match the rest exactly.

Suitable for Where It Is Going

A tile behind a hob, on a bathroom floor, on an external wall in freezing weather and on a restaurant plate all need different bodies, glazes and pigments. We ask where the work is going before quoting, specify a frost-proof body for anything outdoors, a non-slip finish for floors, food-safe pigments free of lead and cadmium for tableware, and heat-resistant specification behind cookers. Getting this wrong is the most common failure in decorated ceramics and it is entirely avoidable.

Ornate tiled dome interior with geometric patterns

Services

What the Studio Produces

Murals, splashbacks, single tiles, restoration, tableware and trade printing.

Murals and Splashbacks

Images, patterns and photographs printed across multiple tiles and set out to the wall, from a two-tile panel to a full room. Includes measurement or checking of the client's dimensions, a setting-out drawing with sockets and cuts marked, a fired proof, numbered tiles and a fixing plan. Suitable for kitchens, bathrooms, hallways, shopfronts and swimming pools, with the body and glaze specified for the location rather than chosen from a standard list.

Single Tiles and Small Pieces

House numbers and names, street signs, memorial and commemorative tiles, coasters, trivets, plaques for benches and buildings, and one-off gifts printed from a photograph or a drawing. Frost-proof bodies for anything mounted outdoors, with fixing holes or adhesive pads as required. There is no minimum order, and turnaround for a single piece is normally five working days including the proof.

Restoration and Matching

Replacement tiles for damaged historic panels, fireplaces, shopfronts, stair risers and church floors, matched by fired sample to the surviving originals in colour, glaze character and dimension, with optional surface ageing. We work with conservation architects and heritage bodies, document each replacement, and mark the reverse discreetly so that the intervention remains identifiable to any future restorer.

Printed Tableware

Plates, bowls, cups, jugs and serving dishes printed with a restaurant's identity, a hotel crest or an artist's design, using food-safe pigments free of lead and cadmium and fired to withstand commercial dishwashers. Runs from twenty-four pieces upwards, on blanks we supply or on the client's existing service. Replacements reprint from stored files, so a broken plate in year three still matches the set.

Design and Artwork Preparation

Help turning a photograph, a sketch, a fabric or a historic pattern into something that works at tile scale, including repeat patterns that tile seamlessly, colour reduction for a traditional look, and adjustment of contrast for the way ceramic pigment behaves. Charged at an hourly rate and always quoted in advance. Clients who arrive with print-ready files pay nothing for this and are told plainly when a file is not going to reproduce well.

Trade and Contract Printing

Printing for interior designers, architects, tile retailers, hotels and ceramicists who want their own work decorated, with trade pricing, white-label packaging and delivery direct to site. We handle sampling for specification packages, keep separations on file for repeat contracts, and can work to a project programme including phased deliveries. Confidentiality for designers' own patterns is standard.

Contacts

Artwork, Quotes and Proofs

Send the image, the wall dimensions and a note of where the tiles are going — indoors, outdoors, behind a hob, on a floor — and we will quote with the correct body and glaze and tell you honestly whether the file will reproduce well at that size.

Restoration matching, tableware runs and trade printing are arranged through the same studio.

Studio2 Place Stanislas, 54000 Nancy, France

Phone+33 3 83 32 47 15

Emailkilnprintstudio@gmx.com

Studio HoursMonday–Friday 09:00–18:00, Saturday by appointment