Custom apparel pricing feels like a black box to a lot of first-time buyers. You send over a design, wait a day, and get back a number with no explanation attached. We built our instant quote calculator specifically to remove that mystery — but it helps to understand the levers behind the number so you can shape the order to your budget.
1. The Blank Garment
Before a drop of ink is involved, you are buying a shirt. A basic heavyweight cotton tee, a soft ringspun fashion tee, and a tri-blend can sit dollars apart per piece. Multiply that across 100 shirts and the garment choice alone can swing an order by hundreds.
Our advice: pick the garment based on how it will be worn. Giveaway shirts at a festival do not need premium tri-blend. Staff uniforms worn five days a week absolutely do.
2. Ink Colors, Not Design Complexity
Screen printing prices by color, not by how complicated a design looks. Each ink color needs its own screen, its own setup, and its own pass on the press. A wildly detailed one-color illustration can be cheaper than a simple four-color logo.
This is also why our minimums scale with color count — twelve units for one color, up to one hundred for five or more. The setup labor has to be spread across enough pieces to make sense.
- 1 color — 12 unit minimum
- 2 colors — 24 unit minimum
- 3 colors — 36 unit minimum
- 4 colors — 50 unit minimum
- 5+ colors — 100 unit minimum
3. Print Locations
A front print and a back print are two separate jobs on the press. Sleeve hits, left-chest logos, and nape prints each add handling time. If budget is tight, a strong single front print often outperforms a scattered multi-location design anyway.
4. Quantity Breaks
Setup cost is fixed. Print 12 shirts and each one carries a twelfth of it; print 288 and the same setup nearly disappears into the per-piece price. This is why jumping from 48 to 72 pieces sometimes barely changes your total — you are buying into a better bracket.
If you are on the edge of a quantity break, run both numbers in the calculator. More shirts for close to the same money is a common and pleasant surprise.
5. Art And Rush Fees
Simple art prep — resizing, cleaning up a vector file, separating colors — is included in our pricing. Full redraws, custom illustration, and brand development are quoted separately based on the design fee schedule on our quote page.
Production runs on a 24-hour clock once your order, artwork, and garments are ready — guaranteed or we don't get paid. Sending print-ready art early is what keeps that clock starting on time.
The Takeaway
Every dollar in a quote traces back to garment, colors, locations, quantity, and art. Adjust any one of them and the price moves predictably.