How the price is actually built
Two costs: a one-time screen per colour, and a per-piece ink charge. At 100 pieces the screen is roughly $25 and the ink about $1.35 per colour, so a one-colour print lands near $1.60 a shirt all-in.
At 500 pieces the same screen is still $25 but spread over five times the run, so the per-piece cost falls to about $0.90. That is the whole reason screen printing is a volume method.
- 1 colour at 100 pcs: ~$1.35 + $0.25 setup per piece.
- 1 colour at 500 pcs: ~$0.85–0.95 all-in.
- Each additional colour adds a screen and an ink charge.
What it cannot do
Photographs, gradients and fine halftones need a different process. You can fake some of it with halftone dots, but the result is a compromise and the customer can see it.
Very fine detail under about 1mm also fills in, particularly on a coarse mesh. A logo with hairline strokes looks crisp on a monitor and mush on a shirt.
Which blanks print best
Medium and heavy cotton, 200gsm upward: the fabric does not corrugate around a thick ink deposit, and the print sits flat. We hold 23 styles from 160 to 350gsm; for screen printing the 230gsm and 260gsm blanks are the safe picks.
On ring-spun and combed surfaces the print edge is cleaner than on a coarse open-end jersey, which matters if the design has sharp type.
Cure is the variable you cannot see
An under-cured screen print looks perfect in the box and fails at wash five. It is the most common reason a good design ends up as a refund.
Ask your printer how they check cure, and wash one sample twice before approving the run. That single step catches most of it.