Screenprinting, or silk-screen, or serigraph, is the art of printing on fabric through a fine screen of nylon (formerly silk). Areas of the screen are masked off and ink is forced through the screen with a squeegee, resulting in an inked shape on the garment. Screenprinting uses one color at a time. Each color needs to dry before the next color is applied. When cured with heat, the screenprinting ink is vivid, permanent, and washable.

In the design at right, two colors were used on a royal blue garment. First, the white was laid down. The orange color fades from dark to light, so white was laid down wherever the design called for orange. Once the white was dry, orange ink was applied. It's not possible to print two colors at once by screenprint, so instead of actually mixing lighter and darker orange inks, we use one color and break it up into tiny dots to simulate mixed colors. The dots get smaller and farther apart as the color gets lighter, and gives us the smooth shaded appearance.

What kind of artwork should I supply?

For screenprinting, please supply the best artwork you can. Our design department will need to create art specially for screenprinting, so there is almost always an art charge, but the easier your art is to work with, the less the charge will be.

We will be happy to talk with you about your options for screenprinted artwork. For instance, in the basketball design above, we knew the design was going on royal blue shirts, so we used the blue of the shirt to add an extra outline around the letters. This saved a color, and saved our customer from adding 50% to the screenprinting cost.

Pricing depends on several factors:

First, quantity and number of colors. The setup time required for 12 shirts is the same as the time required for 1200 shirts, so quantity discounts apply. We would almost never recommend screenprinting only 12 items; there are other options for low quantity garment graphics. There is a charge per item for each color, so the number of colors definitely affects the price, as in the basketball design example above.

Second, the kind of garment the artwork will go on. Different fabrics need different treatments. A very porous or dark-colored garment might need a white underlay for a brightly-colored design.

It would be wonderful if we could give you a price chart that would spell it all out. However the possiblities are so great, a chart would be so complicated as to be useless. Therefore, to give you the best result, we prefer to quote each job individually.