Textile Printing Methods Compared: Screen, Pigment, Sublimation, Digital

A print's method decides its hand, its colour range, its wash fastness and its cost per metre - long before the artwork matters. Picking the wrong one gives you a stiff patch where you wanted a soft all-over, or a bill that only works at 10,000 metres when you needed 200. Here is how the main methods compare and when each fits.

The two big splits: how ink is laid, and what the ink is

Two questions separate every print method:

• How is colour applied? Through screens (one screen per colour - great at volume, limited colour count) or digitally (inkjet - unlimited colour, no screens, better for short runs and photographic art).
• What is the colourant? A pigment (sits on the surface with a binder - any fibre, but a firmer hand and weaker rub on solids) or a dye (reactive, disperse, etc. - bonds into the fibre, softer hand, better fastness, fibre-specific).

Those two axes explain most of the trade-offs below.