Sublimation Clothing Manufacturer

Sublimation is best for polyester garments where the print covers the whole piece: all-over patterns, edge-to-edge graphics, photographic imagery, gradients and artwork with more colours than screen printing can economically handle. The dye goes into the fibre instead of sitting on it, so there is no hand feel at all: no plastic panel, no cracking, no added weight. That makes it the right choice for activewear, jerseys, leggings, cycling and running kit, team wear, swim and rash guards, and any piece where the print crosses seams or wraps the body. We print the panels before sewing them, so your design is laid out against the pattern rather than squeezed into a print box. It is the wrong choice for cotton, for light designs on dark garments, and for a single-colour logo on a heavyweight tee, where screen printing looks better and costs less. Send the artwork and we will say plainly if sublimation is the wrong tool for it.

The minimum is 150 pieces per style and per colourway, the same floor as the rest of our manufacturing. With sublimation a colourway is a new print file rather than a new dye lot, so there is no dyeing minimum behind it, but each colourway still counts as its own 150: one jersey in two colourways is 300 pieces. There are no screens to make, so a many-colour photographic design costs the same to print as a two-colour one. The one-off cost sits in the artwork: laying your design out across the pattern pieces so graphics align once the garment is sewn. What stops the floor going lower is the fabric: sublimation needs polyester knitted and finished for the purpose, produced in lot sizes, plus pattern and artwork set-up spread over the run. For a complex design, sublimation is often the cheapest route at 150 pieces, not the most expensive. The MOQ calculator adds up styles multiplied by colourways.

There is no list price: we quote each sublimation order from four things (print area, base fabric, panel count and quantity), and extra colours in the artwork add nothing, because there are no screens. Transfer paper and dye are used by area, and every panel of an all-over garment is printed in full, so a seam-to-seam design is priced on the whole surface, plus bleed margins for alignment across seams. The polyester base fabric is bought by the kilo, so GSM moves the cost; recycled polyester comes from a different mill line and is quoted separately. Panel count matters because a raglan sleeve, side inserts or a gusset add press passes and matching work. Print cost per piece falls little with volume; the unit price steps down as pattern, sample and artwork costs spread, at roughly 500 and 1,000 pieces, then flattens out. Put our figure into the pricing calculator to see the margin it leaves at your retail price.

That is the version worth doing. Printing flat fabric panels before the garment is assembled means the design can run edge to edge and across seams without breaking, which is impossible if you print onto a finished garment. It is how proper cycling kit, team wear and rash guards are made. The trade-off is planning: the artwork has to be laid out against the pattern pieces so that graphics line up once sewn, and that layout is done before cutting rather than adjusted afterwards. It also means a change to the fit changes the artwork layout. Done once, it is reused on every reorder at no extra cost. If your design is a chest logo rather than an all-over graphic, this is overkill and screen printing will serve you better.

Because the process is chemistry, not deposition. Sublimation turns solid dye directly into gas under heat and pressure, and that gas has to bond with something. Polyester is a polymer whose molecular structure opens under heat and accepts the dye, then closes around it as it cools — the colour ends up inside the fibre permanently. Cotton is cellulose, a natural fibre with no synthetic polymer for the dye to enter, so the gas simply settles on the surface and washes out within a few cycles. Blends work in proportion to their polyester content: a 65/35 poly-cotton takes a visibly muted print compared with 100 per cent polyester, and that softness is inherent rather than a defect. There is no treatment that makes cotton behave like polyester for this. If the garment must be cotton, screen print instead.

No: sublimation dye is transparent, so it only adds colour to what is already there, and white is simply the fabric left undyed. That is why we buy the base cloth white or light for every sublimated order, and why any white in your artwork comes out exactly the shade of that fabric. On white or pale polyester the colour is vivid and saturated; on navy or black the dye barely shows, because there is nothing lighter underneath for it to change. A design drawn on a dark mock-up therefore needs rethinking before it becomes a print file. If the garment has to be dark with light artwork, the practical routes are screen printing with an underbase, embroidery, or cut-and-sew with panels of differently coloured fabric. A supplier promising white sublimation ink is describing a different process, and we will point that out before you order.

It will not crack or peel, and it does not fade the way a surface print does, because the dye sits inside the polyester fibre rather than on top of it. Heat and pressure turn the dye to gas, it enters the fibre, and it stays there once the fabric cools. With no layer on the surface, there is nothing to split under stretch, lift at the edges or wash away, which is how plastisol prints usually fail on hard-worn activewear. Over years of sun the colour shifts slightly, as it does on any dyed textile, but it will not flake. There is no plastic panel to stiffen either, so a printed legging feels the same over the artwork as anywhere else. The real risks lie elsewhere: a hot iron pressed straight onto the print, and oil-based stains, which bond to polyester. Wash cool, skip fabric softener, and the print should outlast the seams and the elastic.

Recycled polyester, yes; GOTS certification, no. Sublimation needs polyester or a high-polyester blend, and GOTS caps synthetic content, so a polyester sublimation fabric cannot carry a GOTS claim. Our own certification is GOTS, RSC 9687, scope certificate available on request, and it covers qualifying cotton-rich fabrics, not this range. Recycled polyester is the realistic sustainability route for sublimated pieces. It comes from a different mill line, with its own price and minimum, so we quote it separately when you ask. The evidence behind a recycled claim is the partner mill's certificate under a Textile Exchange standard such as the Global Recycled Standard (GRS). That certificate documents the fabric; we hold GOTS only, not GRS, so we cannot certify the finished garment, and you should talk to us before any recycled or GRS claim goes on your hangtag. If an organic claim matters more than an all-over print, the garment has to be cotton-rich, and sublimation is off the table.

About 10 days for sampling, then 40 to 50 days of production after you approve the sample, then freight, shipped DDP to most markets. Sublimation has no screens to make and no dye lot to book, so a new colourway is a new print file rather than a new fabric order, but the artwork still has to be laid out on the pattern pieces before printing, and that layout is part of what the sample checks: whether the design lines up across the seams and sits where you expect on the body in every size. Send the artwork as a vector file or high-resolution image, with the colours you need matched, through our contact page. From order to your door, plan on about 70 days by air.

Any garment made in polyester or a high-polyester blend, in a light or white base colour. The usual ones are team and club jerseys, cycling kit, rash guards, leggings and activewear tops, running tees, and all-over-print tees and shorts in polyester. Sublimation does not work on cotton, because the dye bonds with polyester fibre and washes out of cotton, and it cannot print white, because the dye is transparent and white is simply the fabric left undyed. For a cotton tee or a dark garment, screen printing, embroidery or DTF is the right method instead; our comparison of screen printing, embroidery, DTG and DTF sets out which fits which job. Every style starts at 150 pieces per style and per colourway.