The short version
GREENGUARD Gold is a third-party certification that tests how much volatile organic compound (VOC) a product gives off after it's been made. Gold is the stricter tier — the limits are set tight enough that the product is considered safe for use in schools, healthcare facilities, offices and other occupied spaces, including environments with children and sensitive groups.
HP Latex is a printing technology that uses water-based latex inks instead of the solvent or eco-solvent inks that have dominated wide-format print for years. The inks come off the printer dry, ready to fit, and the prints themselves carry GREENGUARD Gold certification.
For a retailer, hospitality operator, school or office, that combination means signage that can go straight up in an occupied space without you needing to clear the room or wait for solvent fumes to dissipate.
Why this matters in practice
If you've ever fitted vinyl signage in a busy shop, an office on a Friday afternoon, or a school during term-time, you know the problem: solvent-printed vinyls smell. The smell is the residual VOCs evaporating out of the ink for hours after it's been applied. Most installers will tell you to leave a room overnight before normal use. In a healthcare setting, you may not have that option. In a food retail or hospitality setting, you really don't.
Latex-printed signage doesn't have that problem. The ink dries fully in the printer; what comes off the machine is essentially inert from a fume point of view. You can fit it in an open shop, behind a working café counter, in a school corridor between lessons.
What GREENGUARD Gold actually tests
GREENGUARD Gold (administered by UL Solutions) tests a finished product in a controlled chamber and measures the concentration of more than 360 individual VOCs released over a defined period. The Gold tier limits are roughly half of the standard GREENGUARD limits, and are aligned with the requirements of the State of California Department of Public Health's standard for emissions from building materials in schools.
The certification covers:
- Total volatile organic compounds (TVOC)
- Specific named VOCs (formaldehyde, acetaldehyde and many others)
- Particulates
In practice, a GREENGUARD Gold-certified print is suitable for the most sensitive built environments — paediatric hospitals, primary schools, dementia care settings, food production environments.
What HP Latex inks are made of
HP Latex inks are water-based emulsions — pigment particles suspended in water with a polymer binder. When the ink hits the substrate, the water and a small amount of co-solvent flash off in the printer's heated cure zone, leaving the pigment locked in a polymer film bonded to the print media. The polymer is what gives latex prints their excellent scratch resistance and outdoor durability.
What that means in practice:
- No mercury, no nickel, no formaldehyde.
- No hazard warnings for transport or storage — they're not classed as hazardous goods.
- No special ventilation required in our workshop, which means cleaner air for our team and a quieter, less industrial-feeling production environment.
- Low odour. A latex-printed banner unrolled in your office smells of warm vinyl for a few minutes; it does not smell of solvent.
What this means for different customers
Retailers. Window graphics, POS, floor decals and shelf-edge promos can be fitted during trading hours without clearing the floor.
Cafés, restaurants, gyms. Wall murals, window manifestation and back-of-house signage can be fitted without taking the space out of service overnight.
Schools, nurseries and healthcare. Wayfinding, classroom door signs, corridor murals and reception graphics can be fitted between lessons, between sessions, or in a partially occupied building.
Offices. Wall vinyls, manifestation on glass partitions and meeting-room graphics can be fitted without forcing teams to work from home for a day while a solvent print airs off.
Exhibition organisers. Stand graphics arrive ready to go up — no offgassing during the build.
Other claims that aren't the same thing
A few terms get used loosely in the print industry; they're not the same as GREENGUARD Gold.
- "Eco-solvent" is a marketing term for a low-odour solvent ink. It's better than full-solvent for fume but it's still solvent-based and still emits VOCs. Not equivalent to GREENGUARD Gold.
- "UV-cured" is a different process again — UV light cures the ink instantly on the printer. UV inks have very low VOC emissions and some specific UV inks are GREENGUARD Gold certified, but not all are. Check the specific product.
- "Water-based" in the broad sense includes a lot of different ink chemistries. HP Latex is one of them; not all water-based inks are equivalent or carry the same certifications.
If you're specifying signage for a sensitive environment, ask for the certification by name — "is the print GREENGUARD Gold certified?" — rather than relying on generic descriptions like "eco" or "low-VOC".
Our position
PJT Print produces all standard signage and large-format work on HP Latex kit, so what leaves our workshop is GREENGUARD Gold certified by default — not as an upgrade you have to pay for. If your project specifies low-emission materials for a school, hospital, food retailer or office, we can supply the certification documents on request.
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