Care and Washing for T-Shirts
By The Velocity Wear Team
Printed cotton tees last longest washed cool, inside out, and dried without high heat. Heat is what damages a print, and the tumble dryer does more of it than the wash does. Our shirts are 150 to 240 GSM combed ring-spun cotton, which is comfortable to launder but will move on a hot cycle if it has not been handled carefully.
What temperature should printed tees be washed at?
Thirty degrees covers almost everything, and it is the instruction we would put on the label by default. It removes ordinary wear, it does not stress a cured print, and it keeps cotton shrinkage to a minimum. Forty is survivable and is what most people actually do. Sixty and above is where prints start to crack and colours shift, and it is also the temperature at which untreated cotton loses length.
Washing inside out is the single easiest improvement, because it means the print rubs against the shirt rather than against the drum and the zips of everything else in the load. Combined with a cool wash, it roughly doubles the life of a screen print in ordinary use. If the shirts are workwear that has to be washed hot for hygiene reasons, say so at the quote stage, because that changes the fabric recommendation before it changes the decoration.
Which decoration survives a hot wash best?
Embroidery, comfortably. Stitched thread is not sitting on the surface in the way ink is, so it takes heat and abrasion far better than any print. The trade-off is that embroidery suits marks and logos rather than large detailed graphics, and it adds thickness that some buyers do not want on a lightweight tee.
A properly cured screen print is next and is very durable in normal use, which for most shirts means cool washes and air drying. DTF sits on the fabric surface and is excellent for full-colour detail, but it likes the dryer even less than screen print does. Sublimation is the most durable of all because the dye becomes part of the fibre, though it only works on the right base fabric. Whichever route you take, the choice happens at quote stage, so mention the wash regime then. The differences between fabric behaviours under heat are set out in cotton vs poly blend on t-shirts.
What has to be on the care label?
Fibre composition and care symbols are the two things a garment sold in the UK, the USA or Europe is expected to carry, and the exact requirements differ by market. A shirt going to retail needs more on it than a shirt being handed to staff. If you are selling under your own brand, the label is part of the product rather than an afterthought, and it is worth getting right before the first run rather than after a retailer queries it.
We offer custom woven neck labels, tear-out labels, swing tags and packaging as part of private label, so the care information can be carried on the label you design rather than on a generic one. The options and what each is for are covered in neck labels on wholesale t-shirts, and the label terminology is in the glossary.
How do you set expectations with the people wearing them?
For staff kit, tell them once and tell them plainly: cool wash, inside out, no tumble dryer. That instruction, delivered when the shirts are handed over, does more for how the kit looks in six months than any specification decision you make at ordering. Most kit that looks tired early has simply been tumbled dry forty times.
For retail, the label does the work, so make sure it is legible and in the right languages for the market. And order enough that you are not forced into a reorder six months later, since a fresh dye lot will not be identical to the first. T-shirts start at $13 a piece at the 50-piece minimum, with the discount rising to a ceiling of 35% across the quantity tiers. Current from-prices are on the wholesale t-shirts page.
