How Much Fabric Does a T-Shirt Take? Consumption, GSM and What It Does to Your Price

A medium adult t-shirt in mid-weight cotton jersey normally works out at about two hundred grams of fabric, roughly 0.18 to 0.23 kg depending on the weight, once around ten per cent cutting waste is counted, and the cloth actually inside the finished garment is a little less. The gap between the two numbers is cutting waste, end-of-roll loss and the fact that no marker nests perfectly. Heavier fabric moves the figure straight away: the same pattern at 200 GSM instead of 160 uses a quarter more cloth. Ask your factory which of the two numbers your quote is based on, because they can differ by ten per cent or more and only one of them is what you are paying for. For comparison, a medium sweatshirt in 320 GSM fleece takes about 0.57 kg, nearly three times as much, which is why fabric weight is the first number to fix in any costing.

The standard estimate takes the pattern's own dimensions before a marker exists. Add the body length, the sleeve length and an allowance for seams and shrinkage; multiply by the chest width plus an allowance; double it, because a garment has a front and a back; multiply by the fabric weight in grams per square metre; then divide by ten thousand to convert to square metres. That gives grams of cloth in the garment. Add a wastage percentage, usually between five and fifteen per cent depending on how well the pieces nest, and you have the figure a factory books fabric against. Your real number comes from the marker once the pattern exists. Write down the allowance you assumed alongside the result, because two estimates that look far apart often differ only in that single figure.

Because cloth is bought by the kilo and it is normally the largest single line in a knit garment's cost. Moving a t-shirt from 160 GSM to 200 GSM adds roughly a quarter to that line without changing a single seam, which is why a heavyweight tee and a standard tee are different products commercially rather than simply different in feel. Weight also compounds on bigger garments: a 400 GSM hoodie carries more grams per square metre and more square metres, because a hood and a pouch pocket are additional panels. That is why a hoodie can consume more than three times what a tee does. It is also why a heavyweight range needs a higher retail price rather than a thinner margin, and why that decision belongs at design stage rather than at costing.

Marker efficiency is the percentage of cloth that ends up inside a pattern piece rather than in the bin, and for simple knit shapes a figure in the high seventies to high eighties is normal. The marker is the layout that nests every pattern piece across the fabric width before cutting, and a figure well below that points to a problem with the nesting or the width used. Fabric width is worth specifying, because a pattern that nests badly at one width may nest well at another. Styles with deep curves or one-directional fabric will consume more than rectangle-heavy ones, which is one of the quieter reasons a simple design costs less to make. Any factory running a proper cutting room can tell you its marker efficiency and the fabric width it used, and reluctance to share them is itself informative.

Yes, and it is the number most first-time brands never plan. Consumption figures are normally quoted for a medium because it sits at the midpoint, but nobody orders only mediums. A run weighted towards large and extra large consumes meaningfully more cloth than the same quantity weighted towards small and medium, and your factory books fabric against your actual ratio rather than an average garment. If you have sales history, share it. If you do not, a conventional adult knitwear starting point is about one small, two medium, two large and one extra large in every six, adjusted for who you actually sell to. Tell us the ratio at enquiry stage rather than after the pattern is graded, because fabric is booked against it and changing it later means rebooking cloth.

Yes, once a pattern exists. Until then any figure is an estimate, including the ones in this guide, because consumption depends on your specific pattern, your fabric width, your size ratio and the marker our cutting room produces. What we can do at enquiry stage is give you a planning range for the garment type and weight you have in mind, and then replace it with the real number when the pattern is made. We would rather quote you a range and then a fact than a single confident figure that changes later, because the fabric line is where a quote moves most. Send a reference garment if you have one, since measuring an existing piece is far more reliable than describing it, and it settles fabric weight and yarn at the same time.

A medium cotton t-shirt in mid-weight jersey uses about 0.18 to 0.23 kg of knitted fabric once cutting waste is counted, roughly two hundred grams, and the finished garment itself weighs a little less. The figure depends mainly on fabric weight: the same pattern at 200 GSM uses about a quarter more cloth than at 160 GSM. Body length, sleeve length and size also move it, and an extra large needs noticeably more than a small. The raw cotton fibre needed is higher than the fabric weight, because some fibre is lost when it is cleaned, spun into yarn and knitted, so treat the fabric figure as the floor rather than the full cotton footprint. For comparison, the average Bangladesh cotton t-shirt entering the EU in 2025 weighed about 154 grams, lighter than most brand tees. Our fabric consumption calculator estimates the cloth for your own measurements and fabric weight, and we give the real figure once your pattern exists.

Knit fabric for t-shirts is bought and costed by weight, not by length, so factories work in kilos per garment rather than metres. A medium tee in 180 GSM jersey books roughly 0.2 kg of fabric once wastage is counted. To convert that into area, divide the weight by the fabric weight per square metre: 200 grams divided by 180 grams per square metre is about 1.1 square metres. How many running metres that represents depends on the width of the fabric roll, and on whether the knit is tubular or open width, so ask your factory which width your marker is built on. Woven shirting is different: it is usually bought by the metre, and a woven shirt's consumption is quoted in metres at a stated width. For any knit garment, the reliable figures to ask for are consumption in kilos per piece, the wastage allowance and the marker efficiency.

Multiply ounces per square yard by about 33.9 to get grams per square metre, or divide GSM by 33.9 to get ounces. So a 5 oz tee is roughly 170 GSM, a 6 oz tee about 203 GSM, and a 180 GSM fabric about 5.3 oz. The conversion works because one ounce is 28.35 grams and one square yard is 0.836 square metres. Two cautions matter when you compare blanks. First, check that the ounce figure is per square yard of fabric, not the weight of the whole garment, because some listings mix the two. Second, ask whether the weight was measured before or after washing and dyeing, since the same fabric can read differently. GSM is the more precise unit and the one most knit factories use on a fabric specification, so specify GSM in your tech pack even if you shop in ounces. Our GSM to ounces converter does the arithmetic in both directions.