How to wash custom printed shirts so they last

Our prints are water-based ink absorbed into the cotton rather than a film sitting on top of it, which changes what you should worry about. There is nothing to peel and nothing to crack. What can happen is gradual fading, and the dryer is responsible for most of it.

Turn it inside out

The single most useful habit. In a washing machine, garments abrade against each other and against the drum, and that mechanical rubbing on the printed surface does more visible damage over a year than the detergent does.

Inside out, the print rubs against the inside of your own shirt. Takes two seconds and is worth more than everything below it.

Cold water

30°C or below, or whatever your machine calls cold. Hot water opens cotton fibres and encourages pigment to release, and it is also what shrinks the garment — see the shrinkage piece for that side of it.

Cold washing is fine for normal wear. If something genuinely needs a hot wash for hygiene reasons, the print will survive it; it will just age faster than it had to.

Skip the dryer, or use it on low

Tumble drying combines the two things a print dislikes: sustained heat and constant abrasion. A shirt that is line-dried keeps its print noticeably longer than an identical shirt tumbled hot, and the difference shows up within months rather than years.

Hang it damp and it will also need less ironing, since the weight of the water pulls the creases out.

If you must tumble, low heat and take it out slightly damp.

Mild detergent, no bleach, no softener

Ordinary liquid detergent is fine. Bleach attacks pigment directly and will visibly lighten a print in one cycle, so keep it away from anything printed — including the oxygen-based "colour safe" sort, which is gentler but not harmless.

Fabric softener coats fibres, and on a printed area that coating can make the print look slightly dull and slightly stiff. It does no real damage. It does not help either.

Skip the powdered detergents with visible granules if you can. Undissolved grains are abrasive against a print in cold water.

Ironing

Never directly on the print. Heat and pressure on printed cotton can flatten the fibres into a shiny patch, which is permanent.

Iron the shirt inside out, or put a cloth between the iron and the print. Steam at a distance is safer than contact.

The first wash

Nothing special is required. If you collected the shirt within a day or two of printing you may see a faint rectangle around the design on a dark garment — that is residue from the pre-treatment used under white ink, and it washes out completely in the first cycle. It is not a fault and there is no need to treat it.

What does not matter

Washing frequency. A shirt washed weekly in cold water inside out will outlast a shirt washed monthly in hot water and tumbled dry. The method matters, the count does not.

Hand washing. Unnecessary. A cold machine cycle is gentler than most people's hand washing.

Dry cleaning. Also unnecessary, and the solvents are harsher than detergent.

Realistically

Inside out and out of the dryer. If those two are habits, the rest is refinement, and a print on a decent blank will still look right after years of regular wear.

The blanks hold up differently too, and the blanks guide says which ones take hard laundry.