Fabric, printing and care

Screen print or DTG — which lasts longer on a T-shirt?

You can usually tell them apart by touch and by the design. A screen print sits slightly proud of the fabric and you can feel it with a fingertip; it uses flat solid colours and a limited palette, because every additional colour means another screen. That constraint is why most superhero emblems are screen printed — bold, few colours, high volume.

DTG is an inkjet printer that prints straight onto the garment. It handles unlimited colours, gradients and photographic images, and it has almost no hand feel. It dominates print-on-demand because it needs no setup per design.

The durability difference is mostly about dark garments. On white or light fabric, DTG bonds directly and wears well. On dark fabric it must first lay down a white underbase for the colours to sit on, and that underbase is the layer that fails — usually showing as the design going grey and chalky before any crack appears.

Neither method fails quickly if the shirt is washed cold and air dried. The choice matters far more for appearance: a crisp flat logo looks better screen printed, and a detailed illustration looks better on DTG.