DIRECT TO GARMENT PRINTING
Direct to garment printing is one of the most co-friendly ways to print. We use water based inks through a digital print process, meaning minimal ink waste and high detail prints.
What inks do we use with DTG printing?
We use plastic-free, water based OEKO-TEX STANDARD 100 certified inks. These inks are eco friendly, and are approved for use on GOTS certified garments. They contain no animal products and are not tested on animals.
With direct to garment printing you can print full colour designs and are not restricted to a limited number of colours like with screen printing. When choosing to print with translucent inks, they soak into the garment and dye the fabric leaving them completely soft to the touch.
You can also now choose to print with opaque inks. This is best for dark coloured garments, or when a design is brighter than the base garment colour. It is more expensive than printing with translucent inks, and you will be able to feel the ink as they sit on top of the fabric.
How to ensure a long lasting DTG print?
Translucent inks are much lighter than opaque inks. They dye the fabric and then will naturally age with the garment. They will not peel or crack because the ink is fully absorbed into the garment. Opaque inks will keep their vibrancy for much longer because they sit on top of the garment, and will age in a similar way to regular screen printing.
No print will look brand new forever, but proper garment aftercare will help keep your garments looking new for longer. Wash & iron inside out on a low heat, don’t tumble dry and never use ‘lightening’ or poor quality detergents as they can bleach the design.
What do we do with our misprinted garments?
Nothing in life is perfect, especially in printing, so occasionally misprints occur, but we never send our misprints to landfill.
We reuse these garments whenever possible for test prints, and when they’ve been used as much as possible we shred the fabric into macrame yarn for our crafts workshops. We currently have several boxes of misprints from over the years held in storage, and we are currently researching all of the amazing ways that we can give these a second life to honour the hard work and environmental impact that helped create them.
How much does DTG printing cost?
Garment prices vary from product to products and our printing prices vary depending on the size of the design and depend on what type of ink your choose for your design. Because of the complexities of this we do not have a standard ‘pricing chart’. The best way to see how much your design will cost is to find your base product from the main menu and adjust the settings to match what you are looking for.
The more you order, the cheaper these prices get. For large volume orders we may recommend switching to screen printing.
How long will it take to get my order?
We are a really small team and are currently working to a 7-13 working day turn around. We can usually accommodate rush orders, but there will be additional fees incurred depending on the size of the order as we have to take into account overtime pay for staff to come in out of hours.
Please be aware that this timeline is an estimate. We are still feeling the effects of the global pandemic and more recent fuel shortages, meaning stock is taking longer to get to us and often taking longer to get to you and your customers. We thank you for being patient during this time.
How much will delivery cost?
This depends on the size of the order and where it’s going. We’re based in Scotland, UK, so anything travelling outwith mainland UK will be more expensive.
We calculate shipping based on weight, and we only charge what it costs us to ship as well as the cost of packaging. You can find a full breakdown of costs in the ‘shipping & delivery’ sections of the website. These prices are always subject to change.
We can ship internationally, however please be aware that Brexit has made things more complicated. Any items going to the EU are now subject to customs fees on arrival, which are solely your responsibility and vary from country to country.
Is there a minimum order quantity?
The great thing about digital printing is that we can print one garment at a time, meaning there is no minimum order quantity.
This also makes this process great for drop shipping. This is a type of ‘print-on-demand’ service that saves you time and money especially when you are just getting started up. We are currently improving our website to make drop shipping an entirely automatic process, so please bear with us while we set this up. We aim to have this fully functional by the end of 2021.
How do I get the best from my designs?
We always recommend designing for the garment, rather than to just stick any design on any item. Some prints won’t work well on certain colours so we always recommend using a mock up of the garment as a background layer in your design software.
Printing with translucent inks is great for white/light garments, or if you are only using black inks on darker garments. Because they are not fully opaque, the colour of the garment will impact the colour of the design. The best way to visualise how this will look is to set the blend mode of your design layer to ‘multiply’. It’s not a perfect representation, but it will give you a good idea of how the colours will translate.
When using opaque inks, large blocky areas of colour can look great, but will give the garment more touch feel, so we quite often recommend to stick with less dense designs when printing into black/dark items.
If designing on illustrator, we recommend a 0.25 white stroke in between colours wherever possible. This will produce an even sharper print than without, and the stroke will be unnoticeable once printed.
It’s always wise to start designing at high res rather than trying to upsize later on (which can cause blurring and pixelation). Set your artwork board to 300dpi and at the size in cm that you want your design to print out at. This way what you see on screen is exactly how it will print. We may refuse to print artwork that is pixelated or low res.
What file format do you need?
The higher quality your file, the better your design will print. We ask for a minimum of 300dpi and it’s better that your image is already at the size you want it to print out at in cm. Resizing can cause blurring and pixelation and we may refuse to print if too low quality.
Files should be .png with a transparent background, and you must check your own designs for errors before submitting for print. We will not refund any orders if there are marks on the garments that are from your design files.
We offer a file prep service if you need assistance at an additional cost.
What garments can you DTG print onto?
We only print onto 100% cotton garments. This is because these inks are really designed for this type of fabric. Any items with a semi-polyester content must be screen printed or embroidered.
