Screen Print Cost Calculator

Where the cost sits

Screen printing has a high setup cost and a very low per-unit cost, which makes it the cheapest method at volume and the most expensive at low quantities.

Setup is per colour: each colour needs its own screen, its own exposure, and its own position on the press. A four-colour design has four setups.

Typical screen setup runs £15 to £30 per colour, and the per-unit print cost after that is frequently under 50p. Which means a one-colour design on 500 shirts is dramatically cheaper per unit than a four-colour design on 20.

Colour count, which drives everything

Each additional colour adds a setup, adds a pass on the press, and adds registration risk where colours must align.

Which is why screen printed designs are typically simplified to fewer colours than the original artwork. A photograph cannot be screen printed directly; it has to be separated into a limited palette or halftoned.

Designing for the method from the start saves money and produces better results. A design conceived in two spot colours prints crisply and cheaply; a full-colour design reduced to two colours afterwards usually looks like a compromise, because it is one.

Print position and garment count

Each print position is a separate setup. A front and back design is two sets of screens, two sets of setups and two passes, and it is priced roughly as two jobs.

Sleeve prints, neck labels and small placements each add their own setup regardless of how small the print is, which makes a tiny sleeve logo proportionally expensive.

Which is why the price of adding a second position is much larger than the size of the print suggests, and why it is worth deciding the positions before requesting a quote rather than adding them afterwards.

Garment colour and underbase

Printing light ink on a dark garment requires a white underbase printed first, then the colour on top. That is an extra screen and an extra pass on every garment.

So a one-colour design on a white shirt is one screen; the same design on a black shirt is two. The cost difference is significant and it surprises people who assumed the garment colour was free.

Some inks are formulated for dark garments without an underbase, and they have limitations in opacity and hand feel. For a design where the colour must be accurate, the underbase is usually necessary.

Working out the crossover

Against direct-to-garment printing, screen printing wins above a quantity that depends on the colour count.

A single-colour design on light garments frequently crosses over around 20 to 30 units. A four-colour design might not cross over until 100 or more, because the setup cost is four times as high.

The calculation is straightforward: total screen cost divided by the per-unit difference between the two methods gives the break-even quantity. Running it before choosing a method is the difference between a sensible decision and a habit.

Ink type is the specification most often left to the printer and it changes both cost and feel. Plastisol sits on the fabric, is forgiving to print and gives strong opaque colour, particularly on dark garments. Water-based inks soak into the fibres and produce a much softer result that customers notice immediately, at the cost of being harder to print and less opaque. For a garment sold on how it feels rather than how bright it is, that difference is worth specifying rather than inheriting.