Guide
Heat Transfer Vinyl vs Screen Printing vs DTF for Custom Shirts
There are three common ways to put a design on a shirt. Each is best at something different, and the right choice mostly depends on how many shirts you need and how many colors the design has.
Heat transfer vinyl (HTV)
HTV is a thin sheet of colored vinyl that is cut to your design and pressed onto the fabric with heat. There are no screens to make, so it is the most economical way to order one shirt or a small batch. It gives bold, solid colors and crisp edges, and it is the standard choice for names, numbers, logos and simple one to three color designs. Specialty finishes such as glitter, puff, flock, metallic and reflective are only practical with vinyl.
Its limit is complexity: designs with many colors or photographic gradients are better suited to another method. This is what we use.
Screen printing
Screen printing pushes ink through a stencil screen, one screen per color. The screens are costly to set up, so it only makes sense in larger runs, typically dozens of shirts or more of the same design. At volume the price per shirt becomes very low and the print feels soft because the ink sits in the fabric.
DTF (direct to film)
DTF prints a full-color design onto a film that is then heat pressed onto the garment. It handles photos and many-color artwork well and works on a wide range of fabrics, at moderate setup cost. The print sits on top of the fabric and can feel a little more plastic than screen printing.
Which should you choose?
For one to a few dozen shirts with a logo, text or a design of a few solid colors, heat transfer vinyl is usually the best value and looks excellent. For hundreds of identical shirts, screen printing wins on cost. For full-color artwork in small quantities, DTF is the usual answer.