How Much Does it Cost to Print a Shirt?

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T-shirts are one of the most popular items that get screen printed for businesses looking to promote themselves. In fact…

“…the use of custom t-shirts to raise social awareness, raise a voice, and support a cause is on the rise…industries such as hospitality, logistics, construction, industrial, and medical, are increasingly providing custom printed t-shirts to their employees as a marketing tool.”

– GlobeNewsWire Custom T-Shirt Printing Market will surpass US$ 9,009.3 Million by 2032

But the question we hear over and over again is, “How much does it cost to print a shirt?” The short answer is…”it depends.” If you are shopping online you’ll likely find prices ranging from $3 or $4 dollars each up to $28 each and beyond.

There are several factors that determine the cost to print a custom t-shirt but in general, they are:

Base Cost of the Apparel to be printed
Type of design and complexity
- Number of colors in the design
Print Locations
The printing method used on the apparel
Number of items to be printed

Let’s have a closer look at how these impact the cost to print a shirt when using a local custom screen-printer.

The base cost of apparel affects cost to print a shirt

T-shirts are relatively inexpensive themselves but they do make up the bulk of the cost to print a shirt. Rising costs in manufacturing and an increase in the cost of base materials can drive prices up. For example, the cost of cotton spiked in May ’22 but has since come down significantly. However, processing and distribution costs remain high. These types of fluctuations can directly impact the price of finished goods.

That said, the affordability of t-shirts as a base for custom printed apparel makes it one of the most competitive options around for promotional, branding, and event advertising. The same can be said for other printable options as well like canvas tote bags, towels, polo shirts or hoodies, and sweatshirts.

It is important that you balance the cost of apparel with the fit and feel when deciding to print a shirt. We’ve found many times that the most expensive option is not always the best option for a given project and clients are greatly satisfied with a ‘budget’ option that fits great and feels amazing.

Type of design and complexity

The type of design, meaning a vector graphic or raster image as well as the quality of the original graphic can impact the cost of printing a shirt as well. The screen printing process is manual, in general. There are screen printing companies that have automatic presses that automate the act of transferring the image to the substrate and in many cases automate the creation of the artwork stencil, but for our purposes, let’s consider it a manual process.

What this translates to in terms of design complexity is the effort required to convert your artwork into a screen printing stencil or stencils. If you have a one-color vector design of your logo that can be easily adjusted to the required size, the cost of artwork prep should be fairly minimal and in some cases completely waived.

However, if you’re looking to print a photograph of your dog on a t-shirt, the process for recreating that image is fairly involved in terms of resizing, color separating, and creating films for the final output on a t-shirt. This example rarely lends itself to screen printing which we’ll discuss below, but you get the idea.

Typically, a screen printing operation will charge an hourly rate to get your artwork ‘press ready.’ We’ve seen this rate as high as $80/hr and as low as FREE. Essentially, the design and complexity of your artwork will drive the cost to prep your artwork to print a shirt.

The number of Colors in Your Design can affect the cost to print a shirt

number of colors and complexity of design affect cost to print a shirt

So, you have your logo or design and it is ready to go, but you see ‘screen charges’ on your estimate. What are screen charges?! Basically, for every color in your design, your screen printer has to create a screen that holds the stencil for that color. This is another area where prices range quite broadly. From free to $40/screen(color) is pretty common.

I can hear you now…”great, but I’m not buying the screen. Why am I paying for it?” Good question, but you’re not really buying it. You’re borrowing it, for lack of a better term, and the screen charge is used to cover wear on the screen when printing your job as well as the materials required to create the stencil on the screen that will be used to print your shirt.

One of the easiest ways to reduce costs when printing a shirt is to have your artwork ready for your printer. Make sure you have sized your artwork and adjusted the resolution (when submitting raster artwork) and be sure to deliver the artwork in an appropriate file format that your printer accepts. When in doubt, reach out. I’m sure they’ll be able to help you.

Print Locations

This is a big one and often catches people unexpectedly. We’ve seen it. We’ve explained it, so here we go…This is often referred to as the number of impressions. Let’s say you want to have your logo printed in one color on the front left chest area of your t-shirts and on the back you want your logo plus your address phone number and web address printed. This constitutes two impressions. Wanna add a sleeve print? Cool, now you’ve got three, and so on.

Pretty simple, but often overlooked as a cost-impacting item. The reason is that separate screens may have to be made to accommodate the additional print locations. Perhaps the graphics for the front and sleeve are smaller than the back image (this is generally the case), or the number of colors on the front and sleeve are different than the back print (second most frequent). Not only are you going to incur an impression fee (think the cost of ink applied), but also potentially additional screen fees for the different-sized (or colored) artwork.

Printing Method Used to Print a Shirt

To this point, we’ve only considered screen printing as a decoration method for your shirt. Screen printing custom shirts is still the most popular option, but there are other methods that may better suit your project.

Screen printing scales up very well. Down? Not so much. As you can tell from the discussion above there are quite a few steps in getting your artwork to the apparel using screen printing. If your project requires very few printed items, screen printing is probably not the best solution based on setup alone. However, if you have hundreds or thousands of apparel items to print, screen printing is still the king even when it comes to complex photo-realistic images.

On the other hand, if you have a small project, going with heat transfer vinyl, direct-to-garment or direct-to-film transfer will almost always win out over screen printing when comparing the cost to print a shirt. The reason for this is that each of these processes makes it easy to create one-off graphics that can be directly applied to your t-shirt. So, you may be paying more per shirt when compared to screen printing at scale, but far less than if you were paying to screen print a single or even a dozen shirts.

Number of Items to be Printed

This factor relates pretty closely to the last. The number of items to be printed will affect your cost to print a shirt both in terms of the print method selected as well as the cost per base item. As with most things, the more you buy at once the lower the price, and t-shirts are no different. Your screen printer will likely get better pricing when placing an order for 100 shirts rather than 10. Add to that the lower cost per color and impression that your printer will charge when screen printing multiple items with the same design at the same time, and you’ll most certainly see a lower cost per item than printing a handful of items.

But You Haven’t Told Me How Much It Costs to Print a Shirt!

You’re right. I haven’t given you an exact price to print your shirts. That’s because every project is different. But in the spirit of playing fair, here you go… for 72 screen printed ‘mid-quality’ t-shirts with one impression and one color you’ll probably find prices ranging from $9 to $12 per shirt plus any artwork fees, finishing fees (like bagging, adding tags, etc. which are optional) and tax.

The cost to print a shirt depends on a few factors.

And there you have it. There are several factors to consider when pricing your shirt project. If you have questions about what will work best for your project you should contact us or your local screen printing shop. We know they’ll be happy to help you through the process!

Dark Point, Ltd. | Custom Apparel, Smart Merch, and Graphics

How Much Does it Cost to Print a Shirt?