Decoration & finishing
Screen Printing for Custom Apparel
Screen printing pushes ink through a mesh stencil, one screen per colour. It has the highest setup cost of any decoration method and the lowest running cost — which is why it is the standard choice at volume and the wrong choice for a run of 30.
Technical specification
- Ink types
- Plastisol, water-based, discharge, metallic
- Colour count
- 1–8 colours per print location
- Best on
- 180 gsm cotton and above; smooth surfaces
- Durability
- Excellent — outlasts the garment when properly cured
- Setup
- One screen per colour; charged once per design
- Economical from
- Approx. 300 pcs per design
Plastisol vs water-based vs discharge
Plastisol sits on top of the fabric and gives the most opaque, durable result — it is the workhorse. Water-based ink soaks into the fabric and leaves a soft, almost-printed-in feel, but it is less opaque on dark colours. Discharge removes the dye and re-dyes the fibre, giving a genuinely soft print on dark cotton, though it only works on dyeable fabrics.
Why setup cost dominates at low quantity
Each colour needs its own screen, and each screen is made once regardless of run size. On a 2,000-piece run that cost nearly vanishes per unit; on a 100-piece run it can exceed the garment cost. This is arithmetic, not a penalty.
What we need from you
Vector artwork layered by colour, with the print size and placement specified. If you only have a raster file we will tell you before setup rather than after.