June 2026 · 5 min read

Choosing between DTG and screen printing

Two methods sit at the heart of decorated apparel. Knowing which to pick before you upload artwork saves real money and a few rounds of email.

Direct-to-garment printing and screen printing are the two methods most apparel orders eventually go through. They are not interchangeable. The decision between them is mostly economic on small runs and mostly material on large ones, but either way it is best made before you upload artwork.

Direct-to-garment (DTG) sprays water-based ink directly onto the fabric using a print head similar to a desktop inkjet, only larger and calibrated for cotton. There are no setup steps per design, which is why DTG suits orders of one to fifty units with photographic complexity. The ink soaks into the fibers, giving a soft hand that you cannot feel on the surface; the trade-off is that DTG colors look a half-stop muted compared with screen, particularly on darker garments which need a white underbase.

Screen printing pushes plastisol or water-based ink through a stencil per color. Each color of artwork becomes one screen, set up by hand, and then the print is run hundreds or thousands of times. The per-unit ink cost is low and the colors are punchy because the ink sits on top of the fabric. The first piece is expensive because of setup; the hundredth is nearly free.

The rule of thumb most studios use: under fifty units with three-plus colors, run DTG. Over fifty with one-to-three colors, run screen. Around the boundary, it depends on the fabric and the design. A solid two-color logo at sixty units is screen territory; a photographic portrait at forty is firmly DTG.

There are second-order factors worth knowing. DTG durability depends on wash care: cold wash inside-out keeps the print looking new past a hundred cycles. Screen prints are more forgiving but can crack if the ink layer is heavy. Embroidery and sublimation are the other two methods used in this category, but they answer different questions: embroidery is for placement on caps and chest marks; sublimation is for polyester and ceramic, not cotton.

If you are unsure which method is right for a specific drop, send the file. We will mock both and tell you which we would run if it were our brand. Most rounds resolve in one reply.