The Differences Between Vinyl and Screen Printing

Screen or vinyl T-shirt printing—Which one is the best for your custom garment? When creating custom swag for your brand, employees, or band, you always want to ensure that you’re using the absolute best option to have the best quality T-shirts. 

While both options produce top-quality and durable prints, your preferences determine which is the best method for you. Let’s look into the differences between vinyl and screen printing to find the greater option out of the two. 

What Is Screen Printing?

Screen printing uses screens (stencils) to re-create your chosen design onto your garment. Every color in the design requires its own stencil to ensure accurate printing. However, it’s easy to reconstruct your artwork because the ink passes through the stencil only in areas you want. You can use only one color per stencil, so you will need multiple screens to produce the final look, depending on how many colors you need in your design. 

What Is Heat Transfer Vinyl?

The heat transfer vinyl (HTV) process involves a machine that cuts out the design and letters in pieces of colored vinyl. After the design is cut out, you place your cutouts onto your garment on a heat press. The heat press is used to print the artwork using a combination of heat and pressure.

Run Time: Screen Printing vs. HTV

Vinyl printing works best for someone printing no more than 16 shirts because while the setup is more straightforward than screen printing, setting up the designs perfectly and pressing each garment can take too much time and become cost ineffective.

Setting up a screen-printing device takes much longer than HTV, but you’re good to go once the setup is ready. However, screen printing works best for someone printing many T-shirts. Most companies have a minimum order of 25 T-shirts. 

Detailing: Screen Printing vs. HTV

Vinyl comes in various colors, shapes, and textures. Heat transfer vinyl printing works best when printing smaller and simpler graphics. It’s even better when working with garments that are text-based designs or include basic shapes, such as tote bags, personalized jerseys, and T-shirts.

If your work involves a lot of blended backgrounds and colors, screen printing is your best option. Screen printing allows you to print details of every color and non-copyrighted photos. 

After reading the differences between vinyl and screen printing, which is the best technique is best for you? 

Vinyl printing produces images that don’t crack or fade over time and is a very cost-effective printing method. Screen printing produces images that may crack or fade over time and is not as affordable, but the method is quicker than HTV. 

If you’re creating customized T-shirts for your family, friends, sports team, or group and need to find a trustworthy HTV store, we’re the one for you! PrimepickUSA takes pride in our wide variety of high-quality vinyl colors, patterns, images, and textures. Browse our store today to create your next best T-shirt!