Stamp ink: which type marks which surface, and which lasts
2 September 2026 ยท Estamplab
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Most stamp trouble is ink trouble. The impression is fine, the die is fine, and the mark still smears, fades, sits wet on the page, or refuses to appear at all. Almost always that is the wrong ink for the surface, and the fix is a different pad rather than a different stamp.
Water-based ink
The office default, and what nearly every self-inking stamp arrives with. It dries fast on ordinary uncoated paper, does not bleed through, is easy to clean off a die, and washes off hands and clothes. It is also the cheapest.
What it will not do is mark anything coated. On a glossy invoice, a laminated sheet, a photograph or a plastic sleeve it beads up and stays wet, and then transfers to whatever touches it next. It also fades over years in daylight, which matters on an archived document and not at all on a delivery note.
Oil-based ink
Slower to dry, considerably more permanent, and it marks surfaces water-based ink slides off: coated stock, cardboard, some plastics. This is the ink in most pre-inked stamps, which is part of why they give a sharper impression.
The trade-off is drying time. A page stamped with oil-based ink and stacked immediately will offset onto the sheet above it, which is the single most common complaint about pre-inked stamps and is not the stamp doing anything wrong.
Pigment ink
Opaque rather than transparent, so it shows on dark and coloured paper where a dye ink disappears. It is also the archival choice: pigment particles sit on the surface rather than soaking in, and they resist fading far better than dye.
It dries slowly on coated paper and can be smudged for a good while, so it suits documents that will lie flat rather than be handled straight away. Certificates, archival records, anything on tinted card.
Solvent and permanent ink
For metal, glass, foil and non-porous plastic. It dries by evaporating rather than soaking in, so it marks surfaces nothing else will touch, and it is close to impossible to remove afterwards.
It also degrades rubber over time. A solvent ink used in an ordinary rubber die will shorten its life noticeably, so these want a photopolymer or specially compounded die, and a dedicated pad that never goes near your paper stamps.
Which to buy
For a company stamp, a date stamp or a received stamp used on ordinary paper, water-based, and stop thinking about it.
For invoices printed on coated or glossy stock, oil-based or pigment. This is the case people get wrong most often, because the stamp works perfectly on the test sheet and fails on the real one.
For anything that has to still be legible in twenty years, pigment.
For marking cartons, crates, metal parts or glass, solvent, on a die made for it.
Colour, and what it signals
Ink colour is a convention rather than a rule, and conventions are worth following because they are how a document is read at a glance. Red carries urgency and refusal: VOID, CANCELLED, CONFIDENTIAL. Blue distinguishes an original from a photocopy, which is why so many signatures and company stamps are blue. Black reads as neutral and formal and photocopies most reliably. Green and purple are used for internal routing precisely because they mean nothing in particular.
When the ink stops being the problem
All of this applies to paper you are holding. If the document is a PDF, a Word file or a spreadsheet that will be emailed rather than printed, the ink question disappears entirely: the mark is drawn into the file at full resolution, it cannot smudge, offset, fade or run out mid-batch, and it looks the same on every screen it reaches.
That is worth saying because a surprising number of ink problems are being solved on documents that never needed to be printed in the first place. If yours does need printing, buy the right pad. If it does not, the pad is a step you can skip.