Direct to Garment printing DTG works best on cotton fabrics and light colours.  As we have explained in other articles, polyester polo shirts and sportswear are a great choice because they wick away sweat and are light, but you cannot use the direct to garment printing process with these.  This is because ink does not sit well into polyester and the ink can ‘migrate’, for example if you tried to print a white logo on a red top it would come out pink.

It is important to understand that most coloured sports clothing and tops are dye sublimated which means ink is absorbed or dyed into the fabric to create the colour.  If you then try and add another ink onto the fabric it simply doesn’t work and can ‘bleed’ into the ink already within the fabric. 

We recommend vinyl printing for smaller orders or screen printing when you have a large number of branded clothing to produce or of course, embroidery but we wouldn’t recommend larger areas of embroidery because it could be uncomfortable on fabrics that sit directly on the skin.  Embroidery can also sit quite ‘heavy’ on the light sports material.

If you have a large logo or message and want to print on sportswear talk to us about vinyl printing or screen printing.