Here's the rule we quote from: a bold design on a pile of tees gets screen printed; a logo on polos, caps, or jackets gets embroidered. That covers most of the custom printing jobs in our inbox, and it comes down to two questions. What's the garment? And what's the art? A soft tee with a big three-color graphic across the chest wants ink. A staff polo with a small crest over the heart wants thread. Answer those two and the method usually picks itself. The rest explains why, what drives the cost, and the few jobs where we'll talk you out of the method you asked for.
How screen printing works, and why quantity matters
Screen printing is a stencil process. Each ink color in your design gets its own screen, a fine mesh with your art burned into it. The garment lies flat, ink is pushed through the screen into the fabric, and the print is cured. Because the ink is in the fibers, not sitting on top, the print flexes and washes with the shirt instead of cracking.
Most of the cost of a screen-printed job is setup: the screens and the press time. That setup doesn't change with the run, so it spreads thinner the more you order. Ordering 48 instead of 24 usually costs far less per shirt, and because every color is another screen, one-color art costs less than three-color. That's why screen printing is the home for team and league shirts, school and event tees, and business merch: anything you need a lot of. The maker tees on our site — Foodies of Lafayette's "Where's the Food?", the Moncus Park Varsity tee, the Quilters' Guild of Acadiana logo tee — are all printed, because a big graphic on a soft tee is what ink is for.
How embroidery works, and why small runs are fine
Embroidery doesn't use ink at all. We convert your logo into a stitch file — instructions for where every stitch goes and in which thread color. That step, digitizing, happens once. From then on every polo and cap comes out identical, order after order.
That's why small runs are fine. There are no screens to burn, so a handful of polos for the front office is a perfectly reasonable order. What drives the price instead is stitch count and placement. Left chest, cap front, sleeve, and back yoke are standard placements and quick to quote. Unusual placements are worth a conversation.
Thread also feels different: raised, premium, and it lasts for years. Cory LeDoux's Poo-Yie cap on our site is an embroidered maroon rope cap — the look most people mean by a logo that belongs on the garment. His Boudin trucker gets there with a leather patch instead. Both are caps; neither one is printed.
What belongs where
| Screen print | Embroidery | |
|---|---|---|
| Typical garments | Tees, hoodies, sweatshirts | Polos, caps, jackets, bags |
| Design style | Big, bold, multi-color prints | Logos, text, small crests |
| Sweet spot | 12+ pieces | 1+ pieces |
| Feel | Soft, part of the fabric | Raised thread, premium |
Caps are nearly always thread: screen printing needs a garment that lays flat, and the cap front is a standard embroidery placement. Hoodies sit on the print side, but a hoodie with a small left-chest logo is really a jacket with a hood. Bags go either way: a bold print on a flat tote, or a stitched logo on a bag you want to look finished. The art decides more than the garment does.
The question behind "which is cheaper?"
I get this one a lot, and the honest answer is that neither method is cheaper on its own. The real question is what you're paying for. Three things move a quote.
- How many. For screen printing, quantity is the whole game, because setup spreads across every shirt. For embroidery it matters less: the logo is digitized once, and a small order is still a sensible order.
- The art. With ink, every color is another screen and every print location — front, back, sleeve — is another setup. With thread, it's stitch count and placement: a small left-chest crest is a quick job; a dense logo across a jacket back is a lot of thread.
- The garment. A blank polo and a blank tee are not the same blank, and the garment is part of every quote.
Tell us those three and you'll get a real number, usually within one business day. The quote includes the blank, the decoration, and setup. No surprise fees later.
What we'll tell you straight
- Tiny text doesn't survive as stitches. Thread has a minimum size it can hold, and the fine print under a logo turns into a fuzzy line. We'll ask to enlarge it or leave it off before anything is stitched.
- A photo-realistic, multi-color image is a printing job, not thread. Embroidery builds an image from solid thread colors; it can't blend a sunset or a face. That art belongs on a printed tee.
- A one-off tee is possible, but setup-heavy. The screens get made whether the run is one shirt or fifty, so one tee carries all of that setup alone. It's the job I most often talk someone out of. If the order is small, a few embroidered polos or caps is the better small order.
Straight answers
Can I do both on one order?
Yes. The classic version is printed tees for the crowd and embroidered polos or caps for the staff. Each piece is quoted on its own method, and you approve a proof for each.
What file do you need?
Best is a vector file: .ai, .eps, .svg, or .pdf. A high-resolution .png or .jpg, 300 dpi at the size you want it printed, is fine. A sketch on paper or a photo of last year's shirt is still fine; we can redraw it, and we'll tell you if there's a charge before we start.
How long does it take?
Plan on two to four weeks from proof approval, depending on the job and the season. Production starts when your proof is approved, so the clock starts with your yes.
Do I see it before it's made?
Always. Every job gets a real mockup proof — your art, on the garment, at size, where it will sit — and nothing goes to press until you approve it.
Still not sure? Send us the art and the garment you have in mind. We handle the whole job from Lafayette, Louisiana — art, proof, production, and shipping — and we'll recommend the method that will look best and cost least. Request a quote. Allons.