Direct-to-Garment
Print method — one of 27 in the glossary
An inkjet process that prints water-based ink straight onto the shirt, with no screens and no setup, so a single piece costs roughly what each of fifty would. Handles photographs and unlimited colours, which screen printing cannot do affordably. Needs cotton fibre to bond to, so it performs poorly on high-polyester blends, and on dark garments it requires pretreatment and a white underbase. Commonly abbreviated DTG.
An inkjet printer for shirts
DTG prints water-based ink straight onto the garment from a print head, with no screens and no setup.
That means one shirt costs roughly what each of fifty costs, which inverts screen printing's economics completely. Below about a dozen pieces it is almost always the cheaper method.
It also handles photographs and unlimited colour, which screen printing can only approximate with halftones.
It needs cotton, and it needs pretreatment
Water-based ink bonds to cellulose. On a high-polyester blend there is much less for it to bond to, so prints come out soft, dull and less durable.
On dark garments the shirt must be pretreated — a liquid sprayed on and pressed — so the white underbase has something to sit on rather than soaking in.
Pretreatment applied unevenly leaves a visible square around the print after washing, which is the most common DTG complaint.
Where it loses
Speed. A DTG machine prints one garment at a time and takes minutes; a screen print carousel takes seconds.
Ink cost per piece, which stays constant rather than falling with volume.
And durability, which is good but generally not the equal of a well-cured plastisol print.
Common questions
- What is DTG printing?
- Direct-to-garment: an inkjet process that prints water-based ink straight onto the shirt with no screens and no setup, so a single piece costs about the same per unit as fifty.
- Is DTG better than screen printing?
- For small runs and photographic artwork, yes. For volume, dense colour and durability, screen printing still wins — and DTG needs cotton where screen printing is more flexible.
- Why does my DTG print have a square around it?
- Uneven pretreatment. The liquid that lets ink bond to a dark garment leaves a visible outline after washing where it was applied heavily or unevenly.
Where this comes up
See also
Last reviewed