Digital Print’s Second Coming in Decorative Surfaces

This article is inspired by a podcast interview with Marc Graindourze of Agfa. You can listen to the podcast interview here.

For more than a decade, the promise of inkjet printing in decorative surfaces has hovered somewhere between tantalising potential and commercial false dawn. Yet today, after years of incremental progress—and no shortage of external shocks—the market appears to be entering a phase of renewed confidence. According to Marc Graindourze, a veteran of Agfa’s industrial inks business, “this year we see a clear recovery of interest” across Europe in particular.

The journey has been anything but linear. A burst of enthusiasm in the early 2010s, followed by a COVID-era spike, was tempered by soaring energy prices and geopolitical uncertainty. But unlike past cycles, Graindourze argues, the fundamentals are now aligned: improvements in reliability, cost management, and design flexibility have made inkjet a serious economic proposition for furniture makers, flooring producers, and surface-decor suppliers.

The attraction is easy enough to explain. Decorative surfaces—from laminate flooring to skirtings, edge bands, wall panels, and furniture boards—thrive on variety and rapid refresh. Traditional gravure cylinders impose constraints on pattern length, design iteration, and run volumes. Inkjet upends that logic. A woodgrain can be infinitely randomised; an artificial-intelligence-generated décor can be trialled within days rather than months; and the awkward tail-end of a product lifecycle can be managed economically without wasteful overruns.

“In the past, you might have gone into a flooring store and found only a handful of designs,” says Graindourze. “Today, the consumer expects choice—sometimes hundreds of SKUs—and digital printing is the only way manufacturers can deliver that variety without drowning in cost.”

This shift is reshaping how producers think about design management. The rigid insistence that digital should exactly match analogue output—once a barrier to adoption—is fading. Increasingly, brand owners are commissioning designs exclusively for inkjet. “The mindset has changed,” Graindourze notes. “It is no longer about proving that you can replicate gravure. It is about creating and maintaining designs digitally across their entire lifecycle.”

For years, detractors of digital printing pointed to the “high price of ink” as the show-stopping obstacle. Graindourze dismisses this as a narrow view. “The relevant question is not the cost per litre of liquid ink,” he argues, “but the total cost of a printed roll or square metre.”

Advances in process control, colour management, and workflow have dramatically reduced consumption. In edge-band printing, for example, the substrate itself is pre-coloured, with inkjet merely adding the final structure and shade. The ink required can be measured in a few millilitres per square metre— a limited part of the overall economics.

Moreover, by eliminating costly cylinders and enabling just-in-time production, digital reduces waste, accelerates time to market, and allows runs to be scaled efficiently from one-off jobs to mass production.

“Customers who embraced digital fully—optimising their workflows, reducing downtime between jobs, and investing in training and colour management—are now more profitable with digital than with analogue,” says Graindourze. Their success stories, though rarely publicised, are increasingly influential in convincing the wider industry.

For Agfa, as for other ink suppliers, the chemistry remains central. “In the end, the consumable defines what you see,” Graindourze insists. Decorative printing demands a palette far removed from the saturated CMYK inks of packaging and advertising. Subtle wood tones, pastel shades, and repeatable textures require formulations tuned for longevity, indoor lightfastness, and low metamerism.

Here the distinction between UV-curable and water-based inks is critical. UV inks, long the driver of industrial inkjet growth, offer durability, adhesion to plastics, and compatibility with LED curing—well suited to edge bands, skirtings, and even automotive interiors where decorative plastics must mimic wood. Water-based inks, by contrast, align naturally with fibre-based décor papers destined for lamination. They integrate more seamlessly into impregnation processes, though they demand more careful printer design and often require primers or topcoats.

In practice, both chemistries are advancing in parallel, often within the same factory. What matters, Graindourze says, is fit-for-purpose chemistry coupled with compliance. Brand owners increasingly require adherence to stringent guidelines on safety, emissions, and sustainability. “You cannot miss them,” he says flatly. “More and more, they are non-negotiable.”

If economics and design flexibility explain digital’s momentum, sustainability reinforces it. Digital production inherently reduces waste: shorter runs, rapid changeovers, and targeted replenishment minimise surplus stock. Improved ink formulations consume less material, while digital’s ability to shift design trials off expensive production presses to proofing devices further cuts inefficiency.

But sustainability extends beyond print. Drying methods, substrate choices, and end-of-life considerations all matter. UV LED curing, with its lower energy footprint, and recyclable fibre-based substrates are becoming important levers. For brand owners navigating the EU’s tightening Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR) and corporate ESG targets, digital is a tool not only for flexibility but also for regulatory compliance.

Perhaps the most intriguing frontier is the intersection of digital print and artificial intelligence. Decorative surfaces demand continuous novelty; retailers and homeowners expect designs that feel authentic, randomised, and fresh. AI design tools are emerging as powerful accelerators, generating complex décors at speed and enabling creative experimentation unthinkable in the analogue era.

“Designers are by nature creative,” says Graindourze. “They are open to tools that expand what they can achieve. AI allows them to play endlessly with structures and randomness. Combined with digital, it means the consumer can lay a floor without ever seeing the same pattern repeat.”

Given these advantages, why is digital not yet the default? Partly, inertia. Traditional gravure processes are deeply embedded, and capital equipment has long lifecycles. Partly, caution. Early adopters often suffered from unreliable systems, costly downtime, and mismatched expectations.

Yet those barriers are eroding. Printhead reliability has improved, colour management has matured, and pioneering firms are demonstrating profitability. Workgroups are emerging to standardise workflows and accelerate knowledge transfer. The shift, Graindourze suggests, is less about “if” than “when.”

The implications extend beyond flooring and furniture. Automotive interiors, wall coverings, and architectural laminates are all ripe for digital disruption. As consumer expectations of variety, personalisation, and sustainability continue to rise, the logic of digital grows stronger.

Graindourze envisions a future where new decorative designs exist only as inkjet files—conceived, proofed, produced, and retired entirely within the digital ecosystem. The role of analogue shrinks to legacy niches; the centre of gravity shifts decisively.

“The proof is no longer theoretical,” he concludes. “The frontrunners are showing that inkjet can be more reliable, more flexible, and more economic than analogue. That is the strongest advertisement for digital—and it is happening now.”