Cost depends on several factors,
1. How many colors in your design?
2. Is it a spot color design or process color design? (see FAQ for difference)
3. How many locations will be printed on the garment? (front, back, sleeve, etc)
4. Quantity is a big factor. The smaller the quantity, the higher the price. Setting up to print is extensive and we dont make money spending hours or days setting up for 5 or 10 shirts at larger quantity prices. Our minimum order is usually 20.
5. Shirt material & color. Why does this matter? See FAQ

Spot color is a method of applying a premixed color of ink directly to the garment. Process color applies four or more standard ink colors (the basic four are cyan, magenta, yellow and black) in very fine screens so that many thousands of colors are created. Spot color is usually used when a few exact colors are needed while process color is used to mix colors together to create other colors. for example, cyan and magenta mixed will make many different shades of purple.

First let’s tackle shirt material.
Printing on 100% cotton, not a problem. Printing on 50/50 cotton poly blend, usually not a problem. 100% polyester, now the problems and expesne come in. Spandex, Rayon, also fall into this category. Polyester is heat sensitive. Special inks are made just for it. They have low cure temps so that the polyester dyes do not overheat and “gas up” through your print. This is known as dye migration. A red polyester shirt can turn a white print to pink. Blue to baby blue. More time and care must go into the process. Dye blockers are printed first as an underbase so to put a barrier between your design and the fabric. So naturally, the cost is going to be higher than a plain ole 100% cotton tee.

Now lets talk about apparel color and how it affects the price.
When printing on dark colored garments, screen printers must use what we call an underbase, almost like a primer. Except its not so much for bonding as it is for color opacity. If you printed 1 layer of white ink on a black shirt it would look dingy, faded, and not a bright white. If you apply a second layer now you have a solid, nearly 100% opaque white.
So why does this cost more you ask. Because the first print must be flash dried, or made tacky before the second layer can be applied. This is the equivilent to printing twice, or printing two colors. You have to use two seperate screens and do twice as much work as you would on a light colored garment with one layer of ink. So even if your design is a one color print, if you are putting it on dark garments, an underbase will be required to achieve a bright, solid white and the same applies for any color of ink going on the garment. A great example is hold a peice of staned glass to the light, you will see all its colors perfectly. Now set that same peice staind glass down on a dark shirt… the colors just disappear.