Screen printing vs DTG: which one your order should use

Two ways to get ink onto a shirt. The right answer depends on how many shirts you want and how many colours are in the art.

We print direct to garment, so you can reasonably expect this to be a sales pitch for DTG. It is not, because there are orders we would rather you took to a screen shop, and you may as well hear why from us.

How each one works

Screen printing pushes thick plastisol or water-based ink through a fine mesh stencil onto the fabric. One screen per colour. A four-colour design therefore needs four screens, four passes through the press and four registrations lined up accurately enough that the colours land on top of each other instead of beside each other, which is skilled work and the reason a good screen printer is worth paying.

DTG sprays water-based ink straight onto the garment from print heads, like an inkjet with a shirt where the paper goes. The shirt gets a pre-treatment sprayed on first so the ink sits in the fibres properly, then it goes under a heat press to cure.

Cost, which is the real question

Screen printing front-loads its cost. Those four screens have to be made whether you print twelve shirts or twelve hundred, so the price per shirt starts high and falls steeply. At 500 shirts with a two-colour logo, screen printing is cheaper per piece than anything else, and not by a small margin.

DTG has almost no setup, so the price per shirt is flat. The first shirt costs about what the hundredth costs. That is terrible news at 500 pieces and excellent news at 5.

Roughly where the lines cross: under 50 shirts, DTG is cheaper. Between 50 and 150 it depends on the colour count — a one-colour design tips toward screens early, a photograph never does. Above 150 with simple art, go find a screen shop.

Colours

This is where DTG stops being a compromise. Screen printing charges per colour because each colour is real physical work, so gradients, photographs and soft shadows are either impossible or expensive enough that designers avoid them. A sunset becomes four flat bands.

DTG does not care. A photograph of your dog costs the same as a single-colour word. Nobody counts colours. If your artwork has blends, drop shadows, or thirty shades of green in it, the decision is already made.

How it feels and how long it lasts

Plastisol screen prints sit on top of the fabric. You can feel the print with a fingertip, sometimes as a distinct plastic patch, and on a heavy deposit the shirt loses a little drape. It is also extremely tough. A well-cured plastisol print on a shirt washed properly will outlive the shirt.

DTG ink soaks into the cotton. There is nothing to feel, which people like, and the print cannot crack or peel because there is no layer to crack. It does fade more than plastisol over a long life — inside out, cold water, no tumble dryer, and you will get years out of it. Hot wash and a hot dryer will age it noticeably faster.

Neither one is fragile. They fail differently: screens crack, DTG fades.

Fabric

DTG wants cotton. 100% ring-spun cotton takes water-based ink beautifully. A 50/50 blend prints acceptably but lighter, because polyester does not absorb the ink the same way. Tri-blends and performance polyester are not what the process is for — colours come out muted and nothing you do in the file fixes it.

Screen printing is far less fussy about what it is printing on. That matters if you have your heart set on a specific heathered tri-blend.

Turnaround

No screens means no screen-making, which is why we can print a shirt the same day you order it. A screen shop needs a day or two before the press even starts, and that is a normal, well-run shop rather than a slow one.

Our cut-off is 1 PM on a business day for same-day work.

A rough rule

Few shirts, complicated art, needed quickly: DTG. Many shirts, simple art, a deadline weeks out: screens.

If you land in the middle, tell us the quantity, the design and the date. We will say which way we would go, including when the answer is a screen shop. There is also a third method worth knowing about for small runs of names and numbers, and if you want the DTG side in more depth, our printing page covers the equipment.