Screen Printing

The process starts with a design broken into individual colors, each burned as its own stencil onto a mesh screen coated in light-sensitive emulsion. A printer loads a shirt onto a platen, lowers a screen for the first color, and drags a squeegee across it to force plastisol or water-based ink through the open mesh onto the fabric; repeat per color, in register, and you've built a full-color print. One color needs a single screen and pass; six colors need six screens, six passes, and careful registration so each layer lands on the last.

It's still the default method most buyers are quoting because nothing beats it on per-unit cost at volume — once screens are burned, a shop runs hundreds of shirts an hour on an automatic press, which is why screen printing dominates event tees, team orders, and reorders of an unchanged design. Compare that to DTG or DTF, where per-unit cost barely drops no matter the quantity. The tradeoff is upfront: screens cost setup time and money regardless of order size, which is why shops post a per-color setup fee and a minimum order quantity.

Pros choose screen printing for 1–6 spot colors on orders of 24+ pieces, switching to DTG or DTF below that volume or for gradients that would need dozens of screens. Ink matters too: plastisol gives the boldest opacity on dark shirts, while water-based and discharge inks give a softer hand-feel some buyers request for vintage-look merch.

A common misconception is that screen printing can't do gradients or photo-quality images. It can, through simulated process or four-color separations, but that takes more screens and setup cost than a spot-color logo. Buyers expecting a full-color photo to cost like a two-color logo are usually surprised once separations come back from the art department.