What goes wrong

The label lifted

Updated October 2026

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How it happens The archetype says so directly Glass is a good surface, which helps Four suppliers, one symptom An overlaminate or a varnish is the usual answer Test it the way the product is used And decide before the print order References

In this category the label is the product as far as a buyer is concerned, and alcohol attacks adhesives.

How it happens

Formula wiped down the side at filling, or a few drops from a sprayer in use, and the alcohol works under the facestock. A corner lifts, the print goes translucent, or ink smears where a thumb passed.

The archetype says so directly

High alcohol attacks plastics and adhesives. The adhesive half gets less attention than the bottle half, and it is the one the customer sees every time they pick the product up.

Glass is a good surface, which helps

Adhesion to glass is easier to achieve than to a low surface energy plastic, so this shelf starts from a better position than the HDPE shelves elsewhere in this library. The attack is chemical rather than mechanical.

Four suppliers, one symptom

Facestock, adhesive, ink and overlaminate each fail differently and are each bought from someone else. Specifying them together, against your actual alcohol percentage, is what turns a recurring complaint into a solved problem.

An overlaminate or a varnish is the usual answer

It protects the ink from wiping and slows the alcohol reaching the adhesive at the edges. It also changes the feel of the label, which in a premium fragrance is a deliberate decision rather than a default.

Test it the way the product is used

Label a filled bottle, wipe the formula down the side, handle it daily for a week and then look at the edges. That is the condition the label has to survive and it takes one bottle to reproduce.

And decide before the print order

Labels are bought in quantity and a lifting edge cannot be fixed with a second label. The test costs a week and the print order costs a lot more.

References

29 CFR 1910.1200, Hazard Communication, which sets what a shipped container of a hazardous chemical carries and requires a safety data sheet. law.cornell.edu

21 CFR 701.3, the cosmetic ingredient declaration, which requires ingredients in descending order of predominance and permits fragrance and flavor ingredients to be declared as "fragrance" and "flavor" rather than individually. law.cornell.edu

Written from federal regulation and from measured catalog data, not from a perfumer’s bench. Whether a formula is Packing Group I, II or III follows from its flash point, and whether the limited quantity exception is available depends on the 172.101 entry for the material. Nothing here is a permit, a classification or a finding that a package complies.