PLA or PETG: which one do you want?
They look identical on the spool and cost about the same. Picking the wrong one is the most common reason a printed thing disappoints.
Nearly everything we print is either PLA or PETG. They look similar on a spool and cost about the same, but they behave differently once the object is in your hands — and picking the wrong one is the most common reason a printed thing disappoints somebody.
Here is how we choose.
PLA: the one that looks best
PLA is made from plant starch rather than petroleum. It prints at a lower temperature, holds crisp detail, and takes color beautifully — the vivid, saturated finishes you see on figurines and decorative pieces are almost always PLA.
It is also rigid, which is what you want for anything that should feel solid rather than flexible.
Its weakness is heat. PLA starts to soften somewhere around 60 °C. That sounds high until you remember what a parked car reaches in July, or a windowsill in direct afternoon sun. A PLA piece left in either can sag quietly out of shape.
Use PLA for: figurines, ornaments, display pieces, anything decorative that lives indoors.
PETG: the one that survives
PETG is a cousin of the plastic used in drinks bottles. It is tougher than PLA, more willing to flex before it snaps, and considerably more tolerant of heat, moisture and sunlight.
Where PLA is brittle — it tends to crack cleanly under a sharp load — PETG bends first. For anything that will be handled daily, dropped, screwed to a wall or left outdoors, that difference decides whether the piece survives its first year.
Its weakness is finish. PETG is slightly stringier to print and does not hold ultra-fine surface detail quite as sharply. On a piece with a lot of tiny texture, a careful eye can tell.
Use PETG for: hooks, brackets, anything load-bearing, anything outdoors, anything in a hot car or a sunny window.
Side by side
- Detail and color — PLA wins.
- Toughness — PETG, comfortably.
- Heat resistance — PETG. PLA softens around 60 °C.
- Sunlight and damp — PETG.
- Rigidity — PLA feels stiffer; PETG flexes before it breaks.
The honest summary
If the piece sits on a shelf and is meant to look good, PLA. If the piece has a job to do, PETG.
Our wall hooks are a good example. They hold weight, they get knocked, and a brittle failure means whatever was hanging on it ends up on the floor. Decorative pieces face none of that, and PLA gives them a better surface.
What about the “biodegradable” claim?
PLA is often sold as biodegradable, and it is — under industrial composting conditions, meaning sustained heat and humidity most home compost heaps never reach. Left in a drawer, a garden or a landfill, a PLA print will outlast you comfortably.
It is a genuinely lower-impact material to produce. It is not something that quietly disappears after use, and we would rather you heard that from us.
Just ask
If you are ordering something and are not sure which way to go, tell us where it is going to live and what it has to put up with. That answer decides the material faster than any spec sheet.
Other filaments are available on request too — say what you need and we will tell you what makes sense.