Heat transfer or screen print: which one your garment order wants
Two processes, two different jobs. The one that suits a run of twelve is rarely the one that suits a run of two hundred — here is how we decide, and what we need from you either way.
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T-shirt printing is not one process. It is at least three, and picking the wrong one is the difference between a run that looks right for years and a run that starts cracking after the fourth wash. The decision is usually made before anyone talks about garments, and it comes down to two questions: how many, and what does the artwork look like.
Heat transfer
Heat transfer prints the design onto a carrier and presses it into the fabric under heat. It is the more economical of the two print routes, it can be produced from almost any image you supply, and garments can be back with you within the day.
That last point is what makes it the default for short runs. There is no screen to make, so there is nothing to amortise across a quantity. Twelve shirts for a team, four polos for a new starter, one shirt for a leaving present — heat transfer, every time. It is also the only sensible answer when every garment has to be different: names on the back of a squad kit, numbers, individual departments.
Where it gives ground is on very large quantities and on hand-feel. A transfer sits on the fabric rather than in it, so it is something you can feel with a fingertip.
Screen printing
Screen printing pushes ink through a mesh, one screen per colour. Making those screens takes setup time, which is why it is the wrong answer for twelve shirts and the right one for two hundred: the setup cost divides down until it disappears, and the per-garment price falls below anything a transfer can do.
The result is better, too. The ink is in the fabric, the colour is denser, and it survives washing longer.
The catch is the artwork. Screen printing needs vector art. A photograph pulled off a phone cannot be separated into screens. If what you have is a JPEG of a logo somebody made years ago, that has to be redrawn before anything can be printed — which is work, and it is worth knowing about before you plan a deadline around it.
Embroidery
Embroidery is the third route and it is not a print at all. The design is stitched, thread colours matched to your palette, and the stitch adds a depth that no flat print has. It is what polos, caps and workwear usually want, particularly where a garment has to look like a uniform rather than like merchandise.
Fine detail is the limit. Thread has a minimum size below which a shape stops being a shape — which is the practical reason a logo needs to survive being reproduced small, and one of several reasons a mark should work in one colour first.
Which one, then
- Under about fifty, or every garment different — heat transfer.
- Over about a hundred of the same thing — screen print, if the artwork is vector or can be made vector.
- Polos, caps, workwear, anything that reads as a uniform — embroidery.
- Somewhere in the middle — ask us. The quantity, the number of colours and the garment all move the line, and we would rather tell you than have you guess.
What we need from you
The artwork in the best form you have it, the quantity, and the garment — either from our own catalogue or your own material.
One thing worth saying plainly about that last option. If you bring in your own material to be decorated, we cannot guarantee it. The garments in our own catalogue are made to be decorated on; a garment we have never handled before can behave in a heat press in ways nobody can predict, and the risk on that one stays with you.
And the quantity, because it is the first thing that moves the answer above — tell us the number you actually want and we will say which process the run wants and what it costs.