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Design Ideas for Luxury Packaging
In this overview of luxury packaging designs, you’ll read about:
- Elevate With Elegance: Luxury packaging often features premium touches like foiling, embossing/debossing, and specialty laminates, creating an impression of exclusivity and high quality.
- Shimmer & Shine: Foil stamping, now available in various colors, adds a metallic glimmer that draws consumers' eyes, making it a key element in luxury packaging, as seen in Rahua’s eye-catching designs.
- Tactile Techniques: Embossing and debossing introduce a 3D feel to your packaging. This invites consumers to touch and engage with your product, signaling premium quality through tactile depth.
- Sustainable Sophistication: Modern luxury packaging increasingly focuses on sustainability, with options such as FSC-certified paperboard and eco-friendly laminates and coatings appealing to environmentally conscious consumers.
- Unboxing as an Art: Creating a memorable unboxing experience with right-size packaging and custom inserts can delight consumers and reinforce your brand's luxury image, much like Apple's celebrated unboxing rituals.
Luxury Packaging Design Options
Some brands play fast and loose with the term “luxury,” but it usually implies a higher price point with artisanal qualities. These traits go along with premium quality and a sense of rarity. They typically have an established pedigree, as well.
When considering luxury product packaging design, you’ll likely want to integrate foiling, embossing/debossing, and specialty laminates into your folding cartons.
Foil Stamping
Once only in silver and golden hues, foil stamping can now apply a metallic shimmer of any color to your substrate. While hot foil stamping relies on heat to adhere resplendent material to your folding carton, cold foil stamping uses ultraviolet light to keep designs in place.
The substantial shimmer of foil stamping remains a popular signal for luxury packaging designs. Few visual cues are as strong. Consumers may not be fully conscious of it, but foil stamping is one of the first design elements looked for when rapidly scanning retail aisles for high-end products.
For instance, health and beauty brand Rahua infuses foil stamping into its hair gloss product packaging design for a lustrous shine that catches consumers’ eyes.
Embossing & Debossing
Advanced design techniques are always going to be associated with luxury packaging. And that, of course, includes embossing and debossing.
Lowering a visual design element into the substrate, debossing adds depth to your product packaging. Alternatively, embossing raises designs in your substrate.
Either approach introduces a tactile quality to your folding cartons. This not only invites consumers to pick up and touch your product packaging, but the 3D feature hints at its premium qualities.
Notably, embossing comes with different effects, such as beveled, raised roof, raised round, raised flat, or sculptured styles.
Laminates & Coatings
If you want to add a refulgent quality to your folding cartons, laminates and coatings can be layered onto the entire substrate.
Laminates contain multiple layers of bonded materials. They are used for additional strength, flexibility, and barrier protection (something that’s especially important for luxury food brands).
For sustainable brands, it’s worth noting that traditional laminates tend to have non-recyclable materials, which are a challenge to separate from recycled materials. So exercise caution when choosing which laminates to use in your luxury packaging.
Coatings add a protective layer directly to your substrate, amplifying its properties. They can be made from either petroleum-based materials or more sustainable alternatives, including natural fibers and bioplastics.
Similarly, they’re employed to protect packaging against moisture and other environmental factors.
Packaging for soy candlemaker Zum Glow’s votives, for example, includes a matte aqueous finish, its slickness signaling its premium quality. The custom window can be another nice flourish for luxury packaging design.
Take note: Aqueous coatings are water-based, which means they’re a more environmentally friendly choice.
Spot UV Printing
A specialized technique, spot UV printing employs ultraviolet light to dry or cure ink instantly. Rather than coat the entire substrate, spot UV can be applied to contained areas of your luxury packaging design.
So while a coating or laminate may help your product outshine competitors, spot UV draws a consumer’s eyes to a discreet part of your packaging. It’s common to apply it to your brand’s logo, but don’t let that restrict you.
You might consider using it to create a compelling contrast between untreated and treated parts of the substrate. The surgical nature of spot UV printing communicates a sense of precision one expects from luxury packaging design.
For example, Red Bud Elixir’s Full Specs packaging integrates multiple spot UV elements, each flourish delighting consumers.
Selecting Sustainable Packaging Materials
When choosing packaging materials, sustainability should be at the top of your list. It’s nearly impossible to become an industry-leading brand today without a heavy focus on sustainable packaging.
Consumers have come to expect it.
Forty-three percent of Americans view the environmental impact of product packaging as extremely or very important, while 4 to 7 percent of consumers are willing to pay a premium well above 10 percent, according to a 2023 report from global consulting firm McKinsey.
A commitment to sustainability is becoming another signal of high quality, even for luxury brands, which have a sordid history of producing packaging excess and waste.
Sustainable packaging design is about embracing the mantra “reduce, reuse, and recycle.” Your packaging materials and the manufacturing processes of your printing partner should adhere as closely to that ethos as possible.
Timber-based products are generally the most sustainable, but keep in mind that some are greener than others. Verify your paperboard is sourced from responsibly managed forests as certified by nonprofits Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) and Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI).
From solid bleached sulfate (SBS) to coated recycled board (CRB), numerous paperboard options are available for luxury product packaging design.
Lastly, post-consumer recycled paperboard and alternative substrates derived from hemp, cotton, and casein protein are viable options for sustainability-first brands, as well. Natural fillers are almost always going to be more sustainable than petroleum-based packaging materials.
Creating a Luxury Unboxing Experience
Unboxing your products has become an important part of the consumer journey. Generic doesn’t cut it for luxury brands. The unboxing experience is an opportunity to impress consumers, reinforce who you are and what you value, and create a strong association.
High-end brands such as Apple have transformed it into an art form—and consumers are taking notice.
Just look at all of the iPhone unboxing videos on YouTube. Influencers have turned it into a consumer ceremony that fortifies Apple as one of the premier electronics and computer brands in the world.
By combining decorative effects, smart marketing collateral, and clever luxury packaging designs, you’ll stand out.
Right-Size Packaging Design
Creating a memorable unboxing experience doesn’t mean you have to introduce a bunch of layers to your folding carton design. In fact, you may want to trim down your materials.
Eco-conscious consumers notice when brands include excessive materials in their packaging. Instead, adopt right-size packaging principles—the practice of using only as much material as you need to secure your products during transportation and storage.
Printed Marketing Collateral
Once you’ve cut the excess, consider what printed marketing collateral you want to feature in the unboxing experience. An informational flier? Promo for other products? QR code for an app or website?
Printed marketing collateral is a way to communicate about your brand and encourage consumers to further engage with you. Plus, it may stick around on a desk or countertop long after they’ve discarded the rest of your packaging—leaving an extended reminder of your brand.
Custom Packaging Design
Rather than settle for a basic folding carton design, luxury packaging uses advanced features to attract attention.
- Windows give consumers a preview of what’s to come, a tease that adds to the anticipation. This is popular for food, electronics, and health and beauty brands.
- Providing additional packaging support, custom inserts enable you to display your products in the most alluring way possible.
- QR codes aren’t just for printed marketing collateral. They’re a discreet way to encourage digital interactions without compromising the sleek design people expect from luxury packaging.
Luxury brands must be more deliberate about packaging designs than others, but with an experienced printing and packaging partner, the process will be a lot less daunting.
When done properly, your packaging will immediately signal what people expect from luxury products—high quality, a certain degree of exclusivity, and a refined taste.