What is screen printing, and when does it beat digital?

A screen is a fine mesh stretched over a frame, coated with a light-sensitive emulsion. Your artwork is separated into one layer per colour, each layer is exposed onto its own screen, and the emulsion washes away where the ink should pass. The screen goes onto the press, ink is pulled across it with a squeegee, and the design lands on the garment. Each colour is a separate screen and a separate pass, so a three-colour design is printed three times, in register.

That setup is why screen printing has a fixed cost per colour that digital methods do not — and why once the screens exist, printing the 500th shirt costs almost nothing more than the 50th.

We print with plastisol for opacity and durability on dark garments, and water-based inks where the softest finish matters on light cotton. Discharge inks, which remove the garment's dye rather than covering it, give the softest result of all on dark cotton and are the finish behind most premium vintage-look tees.

Quantity. From roughly 150 pieces upward with artwork of one to four colours, screen printing is the most economical method we run, and the gap widens as the order grows. At 500 pieces it is often half the per-piece cost of DTF.

Solid colour and bold shapes. Logos, lettering, blocks of colour and graphic shapes are what screen print does best. The ink lays down thick and even, with an opacity digital methods cannot match on dark fabric.

Durability. A plastisol screen print, cured properly, outlasts the garment. Team kits, workwear, uniforms and anything washed daily are screen-print jobs.

Special inks. Puff, metallic, glow-in-the-dark, reflective, high-density and discharge are all screen-print effects. None of them are available digitally.

Photographs and gradients. Screen printing reproduces continuous tone only through halftone dots, which is possible but demanding and expensive in colour count. For photographic artwork, DTG or DTF is cheaper and better.

Small runs with many colours. A six-colour design on 50 pieces means six screens for 50 prints — the setup dominates the price. DTF prints the same artwork with no setup.

Many different designs. Each design needs its own screens. An order of ten designs at 30 pieces each is ten setups; DTF handles it as one job.

Three things set the price: the number of colours, the print size and the quantity. Each colour is a screen, and from our current rate sheet a screen carries a one-off setup of around $30 spread across the order. Per piece, a one-colour left-chest print adds roughly $0.90 at 50 pieces; a three-colour full-back print around $3.40. Both fall steeply as quantity rises — at 500 pieces the same full-back print is under $2.

On a 200 gsm classic tee that starts near $10 at 50 pieces, a one-colour chest print lands around $11.50 per piece at the minimum, and nearer $8 per piece at 500. The calculator shows the curve for your exact order.

Our screen-print line sits beside DTF, DTG, embroidery and sublimation in Lahore. Screens are exposed in-house, so a design change between sample and bulk costs a day, not a week. The same team cuts and sews the garments, which means a screen-printed run can be on our own blanks or on a garment made from scratch to your spec.

Minimum 50 pieces across sizes — though screen printing comes into its own from 150 up. As fast as 7–10 days on stock garments; 10–14 working days for cut-and-sew. We print for brands, schools, teams and businesses across Pakistan and ship bulk screen-printed orders worldwide.