Choosing Color Options To Reduce Screen Printing Costs

If you are a business owner and want to advertise your business, then handing out free t-shirts to friends, family members, and customers is an awesome way to advertise. If you have a fairly small budget, however, then you may not be able to invest all your funds in hundreds of t-shirts. Buying in bulk will often decrease your per piece cost per shirt, but there are other ways to keep costs down without having to buy a ton of shirts. Choosing your colors wisely is one way to do this. 

Opt For One Color Images

There are a variety of factors that are used to determine the price of a screen printed t-shirt. The size of your order, the number of colors in the image, and whether or not the front or the back contain an image. Making sure that just the front of the shirt is printed with a graphic is one easy way to reduce costs, and so is opting for one-color image instead of two- or three-color image.. 

If you have a two-color image that you want to use, like your logo, then use the shirt color as your second tone. You will likely have a dozen or more shirt color options available to you. As your image is prepared for printing, ask the screen printer to remove one of the colors so the t-shirt color shows through the "white space" in the image. For example, if your logo has the company name inside a shape like the Goodyear logo, then ask for yellow t-shirts with blue screen printing. In this example, the yellow will show through the middle of the blue rectangle and appear exactly like your logo so you can retain your company image and branding message.

Consider Halftones

If you have a fairly complicated photograph or full-colored image that you want to use, then you may not be able to get away with just single color screen printed shirts. However, you can ask for a halftone print with two colors instead of full-color printing. In this case, you can use the t-shirt as your third color option or even your second if you want a photograph. 

Halftone printing is completed when dots are placed on a shirt to make it appear as though an image is shaded. For example, newspaper use halftones to print photographs. With a newspaper, the white paper is part of the image and black dots are printed over the top. The dots are spaced out and shaped in a way that an image is formed. This same principle can be used with screen printing if the shirt is used in place of the paper. If you have complicated images, then two colors can be used in a similar way by placing dots over one another to create different tones and shadows. Speak with your screen printer about this option and ask for a sample image to be printed so you can decide if halftone printing produces an image you like. 

For more information, see a website such as http://www.absolutescreenprinting.com.