If you’ve ever tried to print custom clothing, then you know how tedious it can be. Whether you’re kickstarting your personal clothing brand or designing custom uniforms for your sports team, getting custom apparel that looks and feels right is a lot harder than it seems.
This is because traditional methods of customizing apparel don’t allow for a lot of flexibility — especially when it comes to the positioning of imagery, the color choices available and the design elements you can place on the clothes. Fortunately, there’s now a better way to create custom clothing.
Using advanced printing technology known as sublimation, companies can manufacture top-of-the-line clothing with unlimited options for customizing the appearance of the fabric.
In this article, we’ll explain how companies make sublimated clothing and the unique advantages in using this type of printing to create custom apparel — as well as how to care for sublimated clothing to get the most out of your garments.
How Do Companies Make Sublimated Clothing?
Ever wondered what sublimation means? The general definition of sublimation is when a substance turns from a solid to a gaseous state without passing through the liquid phase.
What is sublimation on clothing, then?
For the purposes of creating custom clothing, when sublimating ink, designs will be printed onto special sheets of paper and then exposed to high temperatures to sublimate that ink onto the fabric. Put very simply, the process follows three steps:
- Design: The first step is using computer software, like Adobe Illustrator, to create the design to be printed on the clothing. This includes choosing the colors of the entire garment, as well as any text, images, logos or other graphics.
- Printing: Once designs are finalized and applied to clothing shaped templates, they are printed onto sublimation paper. This is a unique type of paper,specifically made for the process, to absorb and retain the ink.
- Sublimation: This is where the process of sublimation actually takes place. Both the paper and the fabric are placed on a heat press, reaching temperatures that cause the ink to vaporize and transfer from the paper onto the fabric — infusing itself with the polyester fibers.
By thermally transferring colors, graphics, text and other designs onto the fabric, the ink integrates with the fibers — instead of sitting on top of them. This results in longer lasting, higher quality imagery.
What Tools Are Used in the Process?
Sublimation printing uses some very fundamental and easily accessible tools, which in turn makes the process of printing much easier and streamlined. If you want to try your hand at sublimating, here’s what you’ll need:
- Sublimation capable printer
- Sublimation ink
- Sublimation paper
- Heat press
- Design software like Adobe Photoshop or Corel Draw
That’s it! You can even use an inkjet printer with specialized equipment and ink to try your hand at DIY sublimation. However, at home printing will result in much lower quality prints than those achieved through professional sublimation printing services using commercial-grade equipment.
Advantages of Sublimated Clothing
Besides being faster, cheaper and easier to manufacture, sublimated clothing provides a host of advantages that makes it the most logical choice for printing customized clothing:
- You can use an endless number of colors at no additional cost.
- The transferred colors are bright and vibrant, thus making your design hues as accurate as possible.
- You can opt for highly complex prints with no limitations on where they can be printed on the fabric.
- Sublimated designs will never get damaged, peel off, or show cracks.
- Altering designs is easy. Just alter the designs on your computer and the new concept can go straight to production.
Are There Any Potential Disadvantages of Using Sublimated Printing?
Believe it or not, sublimation has almost no-trade offs to speak of. Perhaps the only limitation you might face is that this process works best only on polyester material.
Unlike other printing methods like direct to garment printing, sublimation does not work with cotton. Sublimated ink does not combine with natural fibers, which means your fabric options will be limited to the many variations of polyester. Thankfully, polyester is actually a great material for comfortable clothing, even more so for sports, where fabric weight and breathability are a major factor.
Another thing to keep in mind is that sublimation uses CMYK printing (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow Black). What this means is, it is not possible to create white to print with any combination of the CMYK inks. However,by leaving any sections of a design that need to be white as transparent in the design file, and then printing on white fabric, the white will naturally show through.
How to Wash Sublimated Clothing
When it comes to custom clothing, the first wash is usually a harrowing experience where you’re never sure if the print will fade, peel, or crack.
Fortunately, this isn’t the case with sublimated clothing. As long as you follow these instructions, your clothes will come out of the wash looking and feeling as good as new:
- Turn your clothes inside out to prevent friction damage from other garments.
- Wash your clothes on cold or lukewarm water with mild soap.
- Do not let garments sit in the washing machine.
- We strongly recommend you hang dry your clothes. If using an air or tumble dryer, use ONLY low heat.
- Do not iron.
Does Sublimated Clothing Fade?
Sublimation stands out when compared to other printing methods because prints last much, much longer. This is because sublimation causes the ink to integrate with the cloth fibers, instead of creating a top layer of pigment.
As long as you wash and care for your sublimated clothing correctly, you’ll have shirts that will stand the test of time with sharp, vibrant colors that look as good as the day you got them.
Start Printing With La Crete
Sublimation printing is an excellent alternative to the traditional methods of fabric printing that we have been familiar with for years. Not only does dye-sub lead to better quality and more durable designs, it is a more efficient, less labor-intensive process — with quicker turnaround times and cost savings.
Even better, with sublimation there’s no limit on what you can print on your clothes. You can let your imaginations run wild, because anything you come up with can be printed.
At La Crete, we specialize in crafting custom uniforms and kits for players at all levels. Through sublimation and a wide selection of polyester fabrics, we can help players of all disciplines look and play their best. Reach out and we’ll work with you to equip your team in the best uniforms the market has to offer.
