How Will Ink Affect My Lasered Granite or Marble Memorial?

When your stone is engraved, the polished surface is etched with a powerful precision laser that produces your text, graphics and images in stunning detail. Nothing more needs to be done for your beautifully engraved stone to last for generations.

However, as an added value to the customer and at no additional cost, we add a specially formulated white ink to your memorial to make the contrast of the engraving “pop". This will make your memorial's text, artwork and photo stand out more for a memorial service.

How long will the ink last?

If the memorial is subjected to the outdoors (as most are), the white ink will eventually fade over time but the underlying engraving with live on in its original form (see images below). How long the ink lasts will depend on weather conditions in your area but the general range is from a few months to a few years. The fading may not be uniform and 'cleaning' the memorial may remove ink.

Can I remove the white ink?

Yes, you can take it all off. Use denatured alcohol (available at any hardware store) and soft bush. A tooth brush works fine. Finish and wipe with Windex.

See the image below for a comparison between a non-inked and an inked memorial. It will eventually look like the non-inked version, retaining its beautiful original detail. Some engraving shops choose not to 'ink' their memorials.

These methods are the industry standard and the engraving process does not differ from engraver to engraver. When you see images online of brilliant white memorials, they have either been inked or you are looking at images that were manipulated in a photo editing software like Photoshop.

Why Mainely Urns is the industry leader in laser engraving

The technical aspects of the engraving aren't the only factors that go into making a beautiful finished stone. Mainely Urns is by far the leader in this field (don't take our word for it, look at the hundreds of third party 5-star reviews on us - as well as our galleries). We don't use a template process but rather treat your stone as a unique hand-made item. We lay out each stone so that it will look the best it could possible look with your particular images or text. Then we send you a proof and you can make any changes you like. We don't engrave the stone until you're 100% happy with the layout.