The first is regular petroleum based varnished box. This is commonly used. It is made of same base material as most inks. There is regular varnish box and scuff resistant varnish box. Typically a varnish box will employ scuff resistant. Varnished boxes of this type are not compatible with glue and therefore must be "spot" applied. This means that the glue area must be free of varnish. Often other parts of a printed box or card also need to be free of varnish so that it can be written or printed on at a later date. An example of this would be the need to mark a carton with a part number or lot number or bar code after being filled with product.

The second typical and increasingly popular varnish is aqueous. Aqueous varnished box has a water-based coating and it has some advantages over petroleum-based varnishes. First of all it is compatible with water-based glue. Secondly it does not yellow with age. Thirdly some people prefer the gloss over petroleum based varnish. Finally it is more scuff resistant than typical petroleum based varnish.

The third typical varnished boxes are UV coated boxes, which stands for ultra violet. It uses ultra violet light to dry. It is in effect a plastic coating. UV varnished box finishing is not recyclable. It produces a very high gloss and can be used for one of three typical purposes. One is to make a box glossy. The other is to make a box water repellent. The third application is to use it as a spot coating to highlight certain aspects of the graphics.

There are more "finishing" specialties that can be done to enhance the graphics of a package. These include embossing, debossing, and foil lamination.