Custom T-Shirt Printing for Bulk Orders: Screen Print, DTF, Embroidery, or Sublimation?

The default for large runs of a simple, one- to four-colour logo on cotton or poly-cotton apparel. Cost per piece drops fast as quantity rises, because the screen setup cost is spread across the whole run — which also means it's the wrong choice for small quantities, where the setup cost dominates. Not suited to photographic or gradient artwork; it's a spot-colour method.

Full-colour artwork printed onto a film, then heat-pressed onto the garment — no screens, no colour-count surcharge, and a genuinely low minimum order (often from around 10 pieces). This is the practical choice for small runs, one-off event batches, or any design with gradients and photographic detail that screen printing can't reproduce. Per-piece cost is higher than screen printing at volume, which is why it stops making sense once you're ordering in the hundreds.

Stitched thread rather than printed ink — the standard for polos, caps, and uniforms where a smaller chest logo and a premium, textured finish matter more than colour range. Embroidery holds up to repeated washing better than most print methods, which is part of why it's the default for uniform programmes rather than one-off event shirts. It isn't suited to large, full-coverage designs or fine detail — very small text or thin lines tend to lose definition when stitched.

Dye is infused directly into the fabric rather than sitting on top of it, giving a soft-hand, full-colour, all-over print with no separate ink layer to crack or peel. It only works on polyester or poly-blend fabric with a light base colour — it won't print visibly on cotton or dark garments — which makes it the right call for all-over sports jerseys and performance-wear branding, and the wrong call for a standard cotton crew-neck.

As a rule of thumb:

Fabric (cotton vs. polyester), garment colour, artwork (spot colour vs. full colour), quantity, and chest-vs-full-front placement decide the method — send those four things with your artwork and we'll recommend one rather than defaulting to whichever suits us. A free digital mock-up comes with every quote so you can see the result before committing to a print run.