One of the reasons that we prefer to print on the garments available on the EZ Corporate Clothing website rather than garments brought in by customers is that we know what we're working with. Often times the type of fabric has an impact on the quality of screen printing and digital printing.
Here we recount some issues with various fabric types and colors for both digital printing and screen printing. These are some important things to keep in mind when placing your next custom printed polos for your business!
Digital Printing Fabric Types
We use a digital printing process called sublimation at EZ Corporate Clothing. Sublimation allows for as little as one piece orders with a variety of vibrant colors. Our sublimated clothing products are very easy to customize, can be completed very quickly, and have beautiful results.
There are, however, two limitations to consider when placing a sublimation order for your custom company clothing:
- Any garment to be sublimated needs to be a cotton/polyester blend. Garments made out of 100% cotton do not absorb color when sublimated on.
- The vibrant logo colors mentioned above are most appealing on light garments. We prefer to sublimate on white garments, but we'll also sublimated on light gray or off white garments.
Screen Printing Fabric Types
Screen printing fabrics are a little more flexible in terms of what types of fabrics can be printed on. We obviously stay away from textured fabrics like towels or fleeces, but other than that, screen printing is generally a customization method that can be used universally.
Sometimes there are issues with screen printing on polyester--though these are ways to work around this complication.
First, let's explain why polyester can sometimes be a problem to print on.
The problem comes from something called dye migration. Basically, what happens is that some of the pigment from the garment will seep into the ink during the "curing" process. Curing happens after the garment has been printed as part of the drying process and garments are placed on a dryer which is heated to 320 degrees. When the garment comes out of the dryer, we say it's been "cured."
Though curing is a necessary step for drying the ink on a screen printed garment, it's also the cause of dye migration. So what can we do about it?
If you read our recent post about screen print flashing this remedy will sound familiar. Before we print the colors you desire on your custom screen printing order, we first print a layer of either white or gray ink. The white layer is probably the most common remedy but the gray underbase works best on dri-fit fabrics so we usually reserve this technique for those fabrics. You're likely to always see a slight difference in ink colors when printing on polyester fabrics, but our sales team knows this and can steer you in the right direction when you're choosing colors for your next custom screen printing order.
Want to chat to a specialist? Give us a call at 1-888-730-1193 or fill out this form to get your own EZ Personal Assistant.
-Michelle Giuseffi
