Five benefits of direct to garment printing

Five benefits of direct to garment printing

When it comes to printing a design, picture or logo on a garment, there are a number of methods that you can use, taking a different route towards the desired end result.

Heat transfer printing is one such method that we use, in which the design is printed on to a special paper, and then transferred to the fabric in question via the application of a heat press. Another popular modern method we use is ‘direct to garment printing’ and we’re going to explore the benefits of this method in this post.

Direct to garment printing, sometimes known as digital to apparel printing or inkjet to garment printing, uses a specially designed inkjet printer and special inks to print the design directly onto the garment, just as you might print a picture straight onto a piece of paper with a regular printer. The benefits of this include:

1. Quick turnaround – Some more traditional methods of garment printing, such as screen printing, take a long time to set up and require the creation of purpose-built meshes and experienced operators. Direct to Garment (DTG) printing meanwhile requires only the specialist DTG inkjet printer, the ink and the garment in question. The direct nature of the process makes it much quicker, so if you need your garments in a hurry we can get them to you without a problem.
2. Designs with complex colour schemes can be printed – Whereas other garment print methods place limitations on the range of colours that can be used in a design, or make it prohibitively expensive to use many colours, DTG printing makes it possible for you to use a full palette, making it perfect for printing things like photographs onto fabric.
3. Short print runs are possible – Because there isn’t the initial set up cost or preparation time taken to get started, we’re able to offer much shorter runs of less than 50 at highly cost-effective prices. This means that you’re able to test out a batch of garments, produce samples, or get things like t-shirts printed for a one-off team event.
4. Most colour garments can be printed onto – DTG printing provides the potential to print onto virtually any colour of garment, so you can create the design that you really want, rather than the one that circumstances force upon you. For the highest quality results though, we recommend that you us a relatively dark print over a light coloured garment.
5. Accurate, high-quality results – Because the artwork or design is printed onto the t-shirt or other garment directly from a digital image, it is possible to accurately recreate the initial design. Necessary adjustments can be carried out quickly and easily via an image processing program.

Direct to garment printing is particularly well suited to short print runs and complex designs, but may not be so well suited to much larger print runs.

We can advise you on what type of garment printing is best for your specific design, so get in touch for a friendly chat and we’ll be happy to help.