Which Shirt Colour Suits Your Design?

Contrast is lightness, not colour

What makes a design readable is the difference in lightness between the artwork and the fabric, more than the difference in colour. A red and a green of the same lightness look very different up close and blur together from across a room. Bright yellow on white looks like two colours on screen and like almost nothing on a shirt.

A simple test: turn your artwork and a swatch of the shirt colour to black and white, with any photo editor or your phone’s greyscale setting. If the design still stands out in grey, it will stand out on the shirt. If it melts into the background, change the artwork colour or the shirt.

On a dark shirt

Black, navy and other dark garments carry light, bright artwork: warm golds, creams, off-whites and saturated colour. Mid-tones, navy, deep green and charcoal fade into the fabric. Pure white can glare; a cream or off-white is softer.

Watch the dark parts of the artwork too. Black outlines, shadows and dark lettering vanish on a black shirt, and a design that relied on them looks unfinished. Either lighten those parts or give them a light outline.

On a light shirt

White and other pale garments carry dark artwork: black, deep inks and saturated mid-tones. Pastels and anything close to white vanish into the fabric.

A light shirt is the most forgiving choice for detailed artwork, photographs and many-coloured illustrations, because almost every colour has something to stand out against.

On a mid-tone shirt

Grey and mid-tone coloured garments are the hardest, because they sit in the middle of the range where most artwork also sits. Go clearly lighter or clearly darker than the fabric — near-white or near-black — and avoid artwork that uses both, since one half will always be weak.

Photographs, gradients and soft edges

• A photograph with a dark background looks like a dark rectangle on a light shirt and disappears at the edges on a dark one. Cut the subject out onto a transparent background first.
• Soft shadows and glows that fade into transparency are the hardest thing to print cleanly. A solid edge is the safer choice.
• Neon and very bright screen colours look a little duller on fabric, because a screen shines light and fabric only reflects it. Colours shift slightly between any screen and a printed shirt.

Colours you can choose

Custom shirts are available in Black, White. You can switch between them in the design studio and watch your design on each. Some designs in our collection are offered on certain shirt colours only.

Text on a shirt

In the studio you can set the colour of any text you add, so match it to the shirt the same way: light on dark, dark on light. Thin and decorative fonts need more contrast than bold ones, and small text needs more than large. If a line has to be read from a distance — a name on a team shirt, an event date — make it bold and make it big.

When the colours are already decided

A company logo, a club crest or a university society’s artwork usually comes with colours that cannot change. Then the shirt is the choice you have. Put the logo on the shirt colours you are considering and pick the one where every part of it stays readable, not only the largest part. If no colour works for the whole logo, most organisations have a one-colour or reversed version — all white, or all black — made for exactly this. Ask whoever looks after the brand for it.

For a group, also think about who will wear it and where. A light shirt shows marks and sweat sooner on a long outdoor day; a black shirt in the summer sun gets hot. The contrast rules are the same either way.

Quick checks before you order

• Look at the preview from arm’s length. If you have to lean in to read it, the contrast is too low.
• Thin lines need more contrast than bold shapes.
• A transparent background matters most on a coloured shirt: a white box behind the artwork shows on anything but white.
• Try the design on two or three shirt colours in the studio before deciding. The one you expected to like is not always the one that works.
• Use preview mode to see the front and back together, so the two sides look like they belong to the same shirt.

Before choosing a colour, make sure the image itself is sharp enough: the resolution you need for shirt printing.

Common questions