MyZone’s Ultimate Guide to Event Wristbands
Whether hosting a multi-day outdoor festival or a weekly night at a local club, wristbands are one of the most popular ways to manage your admissions.
In this article, we take a quick look at the most popular event wristband types and show you exactly what kind of event they’re best suited for, how they can be customized, and what kind of security features they offer.
While all of our wristbands are available in a large variety of standard stock colours, we encourage all of our clients to invest in customized bands for extra security and brand power. For more information on Tyvek, plastic, vinyl, silicone, and cloth wristbands, contact us here.
Say Goodbye to Paper Event Wristbands
Paper wristbands are outdated, and most serious event professionals no longer use them for admissions. While paper event wristbands still make the occasional appearance at private parties and small school events, we advise all of our clients to avoid using them wherever possible.
Paper is made of randomly felted layers of fibre and naturally has a certain degree of porosity, allowing fluids to pass through its structure. In turn, paper wristbands do not hold up well in conditions where they are directly exposed to water. This includes any outdoor event, or events where patrons may be using the washroom and washing their hands under a tap.
Paper wristbands are usually available in a variety of popular stock colours and are not customised. They feature a basic adhesive strip to fasten the wristband to the wrist and offer little-to-no security for events.
As we’ve already mentioned, paper wristbands will deteriorate as soon as they come in contact with water, making it impossible to keep track of who is meant to enter your event and who isn’t. The fact that they generally only come in stock colours and are available at almost any dollar store doesn’t help either.
In turn, paper event wristbands are rapidly being replaced by a combination of Tyvek, plastic, vinyl, silicone, and cloth wristbands. Read on to find out which will best suit your next event.
Tyvek Wristbands
Tyvek has become the industry standard for event wristbands. It was first discovered in 1955 and was trademarked by Canadian chemical company DuPont in 1965. By 1967, it was readily available for commercial use.
Tyvek wristbands are made from flash-spun, high-density polyethylene fibres, which are bonded by heat and pressure. Due to Tyvek’s chemical composition, it allows vapour to pass through its fibres while simultaneously blocking out liquids. This makes for a breathable, water-resistant material that serves many different purposes.
Tyvek is currently being used for:
-Protective gear for workers handling hazardous materials such as lead, asbestos, and other chemicals.
-Packaging for medical and pharmaceutical industries that is compatible with a variety of sterilization methods, including ethylene oxide, gamma, electron-beam, and steam.
-Cargo covers are utilized for international freight that is shipped via air. Their primary function is to protect perishable and temperature-sensitive items. Various industries, including pharmaceutical companies and perishables distributors commonly use such covers.
-Durable wristbands for a variety of indoor and outdoor events.
Tyvek wristbands are water-resistant and feature a high-quality, waterproof, die-cut adhesive, which means they’re perfectly suited for a variety of indoor and outdoor events where your guests may come in contact with water or other liquids.
Tyvek wristbands are available in over 50 different stock colours and can be customized with your own designs, logos, images, and more. Obviously, while increasing the visual appeal of your wristband, customization also gives you an added layer of security, making it more difficult for counterfeiters to make fraudulent copies of your wristbands. They are also tamper-proof and serial-numbered.
Perfect for:
- One-day wear
- Indoor and outdoor events
- Last minute orders
Price per 500: starting at $18.95
Ships in: Minimum 1 business day
Available sizes: 10” x ¾” or 10” x 1”
Plastic Wristbands
Plastic event wristbands are great for extended wear. Made from durable, A-Grade plastic, these wristbands are waterproof, stretch-resistant, and super comfortable.
Plastic wristbands come in a variety of standard designs, including stock colours, holographic colours, and plastic prints. Both standard stock and holographic bands can be customized with your own logos, designs, text, and images, using either one or multi-colour imprinting technology.
Multi-colour imprinting is great for complex, detailed designs, allowing for more than one colour to be printed onto the band. On the other hand, one-colour imprinting is great for smaller budgets and can still produce excellent results.
Plastic wristbands are a popular admissions solution for a variety of events, including outdoor music festivals, multi-day conferences, weekly club events, and seasonal parties. They come equipped with a one-time locking snap that removes any risk of transferring your wristband from one guest to another.
Finally, customized plastic wristbands featuring personalized logos and designs provide extra security as they are hard to replicate by fraudsters.
Perfect for:
- Extended wear (2-3 days)
- Indoor and outdoor events
- Last minute orders
Price per 500: $43.95
Shipping time: Minimum 1 business day
Available sizes: 11” x ¾”
Vinyl Wristbands
Vinyl wristbands are a popular alternative to plastic wristbands, offering similar customization options and solid security features.
Our vinyl wristbands are constructed from three layers of high-quality polyvinyl chloride, or PVC. PVC was first accidentally synthesized by German chemist Eugen Baumann in 1872, but it found its place in commercial industries in the 1920s, when scientists discovered how to plasticize it using additives.
Nowadays, vinyl serves many purposes across a wide variety of businesses. It is a very inexpensive material to produce and, unlike other plastics, can be recycled.
Vinyl is currently being used for:
- The creation of construction materials, such as pipes, flooring, window sills and frames, and much more.
- Insulation for electrical cables.
- Clothing, such as ski equipment, shoes, coats, jackets, and much more.
- Creating tubing and containers for the medical industry.
The three-layer construction of our vinyl wristbands makes for slightly thicker bands that are super-durable, completely waterproof, and stretch-resistant. They also come equipped with a plastic closure snap that’s completely tamper-proof to avoid transfers.
Vinyl wristbands are available in over 10 different stock colours and come with either three or five removable stubs. Like our plastic wristbands, our vinyl wristbands can be customized with your own personal logos and designs, using multi- or one-colour imprinting technology. Custom bands can be equipped with up to seven removal stubs.
Perfect for:
- Long-term wear (up to 10 days)
- Indoor and outdoor events
- Last-minute orders
- Added security
- Customized orders featuring graphics, logos, text, etc.
Price per 500: $53.95
Shipping time: Minimum 1 business day
Available sizes: 10”x 3/4”
Silicone Event Wristbands
Silicone wristbands are more of a marketing tool than a simple admission solution. When teamed up with a solid branding strategy, these wristbands can live on as a souvenir long after your event is over.
Made from 100% pure silicone, these wristbands are latex-free, child-safe, and extremely durable. They can be customized with text, basic logos and designs and are very popular among clients organizing fundraisers and charity events and also established event creators with a solid and loyal customer base.
We stock a variety of pre-designed silicone wristbands and bands in over 15 solid colours that can be debossed or printed with your own designs, logos, or text. Debossed designs can be filled with one colour to help strengthen your message, while printed bands can be decked out with up to four colours.
Customized silicone bands are a powerful way of making your brand seem BIG and help to build trust and familiarity among your customers. For more information on how custom wristbands can benefit your brand, click here.
Perfect for:
- Added marketing power
- Brand recognition
- Souvenirs
- Fundraisers and charity events
Price per band: as low as 25¢
Shipping time: Minimum 5 business days
Available sizes: 202mm x ½ “ or 180mm x ½ “
Cloth Event Wristbands
If you’re looking to invest in custom wristbands that’ll really make your event stand out from the competition, cloth bands are the perfect solution.
Cloth wristbands are ideal for long-term use at outdoor events and conferences, and thanks to new technology, they can also be customized to portray your brand EXACTLY as you imagined.
Brand consistency is a very important aspect of how your customers perceive what your event is about. In a recent article on Venveo, Beth Pop Nikolov explains the importance of consistent branding using the following example:
“When you’re getting to know a person, you start to develop opinions, ideas and assumptions about them based on your interactions. If they are dressed in a business suit one day, bermuda shorts and a ratty T-shirt the next and then a scuba diving suit another time, it may be hard to nail down exactly who they are and what they are all about.”
Investing in customized cloth wristbands will help you reiterate what your event and brand are about to your customers. If you’ve spent hard-earned cash, resources, and time on portraying your next event as a premium dance festival, cloth wristbands will reiterate that message a lot more successfully than stock tyvek bands, for example.
Your personal designs, slogans, logos, and text can either be printed or woven directly into the band. Woven cloth wristbands are great for simple, bold designs, and are available in batches of 100 bands. Printed cloth wristbands, on the other hand, boast a satiny-smooth finish that is mirrored on both the front AND back of the band, and can be customized with unlimited color options.
All of our wristbands also come equipped with a secure, tamper-proof locking tooth, and can be serial numbered for added security.
Perfect for:
- Multi-day outdoor festivals
- Extra branding power
- Small orders
Price per band: As low as 37c
Shipping time: 10-17 business days
Available size: 13.77” x 0.59”
Order Your Event Wristbands Now!
So there you have it: a detailed rundown of all the event wristband options available to you. If you have particular questions regarding any of these bands, customization, security, or orders, feel free to contact us today.