Screen printing is the veteran of custom apparel. It’s been the backbone of the T-shirt printing industry for decades, and for good reason — when you need a bold, vibrant print on a large number of garments, nothing beats it on cost or durability.

The key thing to understand about screen printing is the setup cost. Creating each screen takes time and materials, which means there’s a fixed cost before a single shirt is printed. This is why screen printing has minimum order quantities — typically 24 to 50 pieces. But once those screens are ready, printing becomes fast and consistent, and the per-unit cost drops dramatically at higher volumes.

On colour and vibrancy, screen printing is hard to beat. The inks are thick and opaque, which means your logo pops even on dark-coloured garments. A white underbase is applied first on dark shirts, then your colours go on top. The result is sharp, saturated, and bold. Screen-printed designs can withstand 40 to 60 washes easily without significant fading or cracking.

The trade-off is design complexity. Each colour requires its own screen, so a six-colour design costs more than a two-colour one. Photographic images, gradients, and fine detail are not ideal for screen printing — you’ll get better results with DTF for those kinds of designs.

DTF printing is the newest of the three methods and has rapidly become the go-to for small to medium orders with complex artwork. If your logo has gradients, photographic elements, fine text, or more than four colours, DTF is almost certainly the right choice.

The game-changing advantage of DTF is that there are no colour limits and no setup costs per colour. A full-colour photographic design costs the same to print as a single-colour logo. This flips the economics of printing for small runs — you don’t pay extra for complexity, and you don’t need to meet a minimum order.

DTF works on virtually any fabric colour. The process automatically includes a white ink layer, which means your design will be vibrant on black, navy, red, or any dark garment without requiring a separate step or extra cost. It also works on cotton, polyester, blends, and even nylon — giving you more garment options than screen printing.

In terms of durability, modern DTF prints are excellent. They resist cracking, peeling, and fading through dozens of washes. The feel is slightly thicker than screen printing — you can feel the transfer on the fabric — but the quality of the print detail more than makes up for it. Newer DTF formulations are getting softer every year.

Embroidery is in a different league entirely. It’s not ink on fabric — it’s thread stitched directly into the fabric. The result is a raised, textured, three-dimensional finish that immediately signals quality and professionalism. There’s a reason every luxury hotel, airline, and executive brand uses embroidery on their uniforms.

The first thing people notice about embroidery is how it feels. Run your finger over an embroidered logo and you feel the raised texture of the threads. This tactile quality adds perceived value to any garment — an embroidered polo shirt simply looks and feels more expensive than a printed one. Embroidered logos actually look better after washing, as the threads soften and settle into the fabric.

Embroidery pricing is based on stitch count (design complexity and size) rather than colour count. A small left-chest logo of around 5,000 to 8,000 stitches is the sweet spot — it looks sharp and the cost is reasonable. Larger designs with higher stitch counts become expensive and can feel stiff or heavy on lightweight fabrics, which is why embroidery is best suited for smaller logo placements on heavier garments like polos, jackets, and caps.

One key consideration: embroidery requires “digitisation” — your logo needs to be converted into a stitch file before it can be produced. Very fine details, thin text, and gradients don’t translate well to thread. Simple, bold logos with clean lines embroider beautifully. Photographic images do not.