What Size Should a Chest Logo Be on a Shirt?
By The Velocity Wear Team
A left chest logo is normally 70 to 100mm wide, positioned roughly 180 to 200mm below the shoulder seam and in line with the centre of the wearer's left chest. Below about 50mm you start losing legible text, and above about 120mm it stops reading as a chest logo and starts reading as a small front print. Width is the measurement to fix, and height follows from it.
Fix the Width, Let the Height Fall Where It Falls
People instinctively specify logo size by height, and it causes trouble because logos vary wildly in proportion. A wide horizontal wordmark and a tall circular crest specified at the same height will look nothing alike on the garment: the wordmark will sprawl across half the chest while the crest sits there looking timid. Specify width instead. Width is what the eye reads as size on a chest, because the chest is a wide, flat-ish area and the logo is competing against the shoulder line and the placket for horizontal space.
Placement Is Measured From a Seam, Never Eyeballed
Give the position as a measurement from a fixed point on the garment, because that is the only way two production runs land in the same place. The shoulder seam is the usual reference: measure down from it to the top edge of the logo. Horizontally, the logo sits over the left chest as worn, which is the right side as you look at the garment laid flat, and centres somewhere between the placket or centre line and the underarm. A placement described as "top left, looks about right" will be reproduced approximately, and approximately is how uniform sets end up mismatched.
Small Text Is the Real Constraint, Especially in Embroidery
The size limit on a chest logo is almost never set by the graphic. It is set by the smallest piece of text in it. Embroidery lays down thread with physical width, so lettering below roughly 4 to 5mm tall starts filling in, counters close up and an 'e' becomes a blob. This is why straplines under a logo are the first casualty of chest placement. The honest answer is usually to drop the strapline at chest size and keep the mark, rather than shrinking everything until the whole thing goes soft. Print tolerates smaller text than embroidery, but a 3mm line of type on a textured fabric is still a bad idea.
Polos, Hoodies and Jackets Each Take Space Away
A t-shirt gives you a clean canvas. A polo does not: the placket runs down the centre and the buttons interrupt anything placed too close in, so a chest logo needs to clear the placket with visible space. Hoodies bring drawcords, a hood seam and a kangaroo pouch, and a logo placed too low can end up sitting on or near the pocket seam, which no amount of pressing will make look deliberate. Zip-front jackets are tightest of all, since the zip tape eats horizontal room and you may need to reduce width to keep clearance. Check each garment style separately rather than assuming one placement carries across.
Scaling Across Garment Sizes: What to Change and What Not To
A logo scaled up for an XL looks oversized on an XS, but scaling logo width per garment size creates a different problem: your brand mark is now a different size on every person, and the set no longer looks uniform. The usual approach is to keep one logo size across the adult range and reduce it for children's garments, where the chest is genuinely too small. What should change with garment size is the placement distance, because shoulder seams sit further down and further out on larger sizes. Keeping the logo the same distance from the seam keeps it in the same visual position on every body.
Left Chest or Centre Chest
Left chest is the default because it reads as corporate and understated, and because it works under an open jacket. Centre chest is a different signal entirely: it looks more like a brand statement and less like uniform, and it usually wants a bigger logo, often 150mm or more, or it looks lost in the middle of the shirt. There is no rule against centre chest, but do not just move a 90mm left chest logo to the middle and expect it to work. It will look like a mistake.
The Check That Catches Everything: Print It at Actual Size
Before approving anything, print the logo on plain paper at exactly the finished size, cut it out, and hold it against a shirt on an actual person. Screens lie about scale in both directions, and a design that looks confident at 200 percent zoom can look apologetic at 80mm on a chest. This one habit catches more sizing errors than any amount of on-screen review. Our free Design Studio lets you lay the artwork out and preview it on the garment first, which gets you most of the way, and the paper test finishes the job.
- Left chest, standard: 70-100mm wide, around 180-200mm below the shoulder seam.
- Cap front: usually 50-60mm wide, limited by the panel and the seam.
- Centre chest: 150mm or wider, otherwise it looks lost rather than deliberate.
- Full front on an adult tee: commonly 250-300mm wide.
- Smallest embroidered lettering: keep it at 4-5mm tall or drop it entirely.
“"A chest logo is not a small version of your logo. It is a different logo that happens to look the same."”