T-Shirts

Tees are the volume backbone of every decoration business, and the 290 styles here sort into three price tiers: a budget wall, a mid-grade step up, and a retail-fit premium shelf. Each tier spans cotton, blends, and poly, so matching the tier to the budget and the fabric to the job, instead of defaulting to one blank, is where the margin lives.

The three tiers

The tiers are about price, not one fabric. Value is the budget wall, where cost-per-piece rules: Gildan's cotton workhorses plus value lines from Next Level, Tultex, and LAT, the choice for event, promo, and uniform work. Everyday is the mid-grade step up, anchored by the Hanes ladder, Gildan's combed A step after carding where short fibers are combed out. Combed yarn is smoother, stronger, and pills less than straight-carded yarn. ring-spun Softstyle, and Shaka Wear's garment-dyed streetwear weight, with a better hand than the budget shelf and pricing below retail premium.

Premium is retail-fit and specialty: Bella + Canvas Airlume Bella+Canvas's branded name for their highest-grade cotton yarn. Combed removes short fibers; ring-spun twists them tighter. The result is a very smooth, pill-resistant fabric. ring-spun for resale and DTG, Comfort Colors for garment-dyed heavyweight in vintage pigments, and Lane Seven for structured heavyweight cotton. LAT and Rabbit Skins extend the wall into youth, toddler, and infant so a family or school order stays in one fabric story.

The styles that matter

The Gildan 5000 is the most widely used blank in custom apparel: affordable, available everywhere, consistent batch to batch, with a midweight surface that takes plastisol The most common screen-printing ink. PVC particles suspended in a plasticizer. It sits on top of the fabric rather than soaking in, which gives a slightly raised feel and very opaque coverage. with strong opacity. The Bella + Canvas 3001 is its retail-fit counterweight, Airlume Bella+Canvas's branded name for their highest-grade cotton yarn. Combed removes short fibers; ring-spun twists them tighter. The result is a very smooth, pill-resistant fabric. combed A step after carding where short fibers are combed out. Combed yarn is smoother, stronger, and pills less than straight-carded yarn. ring-spun cotton whose tight, smooth face is what DTG and DTF want. The Next Level 3600 sits between the two in both price and hand How a fabric feels against the skin. Printers also use it to describe the tactile thickness of an ink deposit (a thick plastisol print has "high hand"). .

On the heavyweight side, the Comfort Colors 1717 pairs a 6.1 oz How dense a knit fabric is, measured in oz/yd². Typical ranges: under 4.5 oz is lightweight fashion; 4.5–5.5 oz is the midweight band most everyday tees fall into; 5.5–6 oz is heavy everyday and fleece; 6 oz and up is the heavyweight tier, with 7 oz and up the streetwear max-weight class. Heavier fabric drapes more substantially, holds prints flatter, and costs more per blank. garment-dyed body with the vintage palette retail brands chase, and Shaka Wear's 7.5 oz How dense a knit fabric is, measured in oz/yd². Typical ranges: under 4.5 oz is lightweight fashion; 4.5–5.5 oz is the midweight band most everyday tees fall into; 5.5–6 oz is heavy everyday and fleece; 6 oz and up is the heavyweight tier, with 7 oz and up the streetwear max-weight class. Heavier fabric drapes more substantially, holds prints flatter, and costs more per blank. garment-dye tees deliver the oversized drop-shoulder cut at max weight.

Decoration & buying notes

Open-end cotton prints bold spot color fine but swallows fine detail and halftones A technique that simulates gradients and shading by printing tiny dots of solid color. The dots vary in size or spacing. Closer together they look darker; farther apart, lighter. , so move detailed art and all DTG work to ring-spun. Heavyweight fabric holds a print flat and resists cracking, which is part of why the boxy heavyweight trend keeps growing.

Garment-dyed blanks vary slightly between dye lots, so buy a reorder-sensitive job in one purchase. And stock women's cuts alongside unisex; relying on unisex-fits-everyone costs retail sales.