DTG printing: how does it work, and who is it for?

DTG printing: how does it work, and who is it for?

DTG (Direct to Garment) projects your design in a single digital pass, straight onto the fabric, with no screen or film in between: every gradient and photo comes through effortlessly, with no extra cost per color. At tknp.io, it is ordered from 10 units per model and priced on quote, whereas our other techniques are priced online.

The essentials in 4 points:

• DTG lays ink straight onto the textile, with no screen and no film: the technique can print a lone t-shirt, but at tknp.io orders start at 10 units per model.
• Its real strength: rich visuals (photos, gradients, fine shading) that would cost extra in screen printing come with no extra cost per color.
• Its real limit: on a dark fabric, a fabric pretreatment and a white ink underbase are needed before the colors, and results are best on cotton, weaker on synthetic or technical fabrics.
• As soon as quantities rise, DTF or screen printing become more cost-effective: you choose DTG for a rich design, not for volume.

How it actually works

A DTG machine works like a household inkjet printer, at industrial scale: print heads lay special textile inks directly onto the fabric, pixel by pixel, exactly like a file printing onto paper. The garment then goes through an oven that heat-sets the ink into the fibers.

It's this printing logic, not a placement logic, that explains everything else. No screen to engrave like in screen printing, no film to cut like in DTF: the file goes straight onto the fabric. Printing the first t-shirt therefore costs about as much as the hundredth, unlike techniques that spread tooling costs over quantity.

Why DTG can print one at a time

Three concrete reasons, all tied to this absence of upfront tooling.

No screen to engrave. Screen printing requires engraving a screen per color before the first print; DTG has nothing comparable to prepare beforehand, and the machine can turn out a lone t-shirt. At tknp.io, DTG is priced on quote from 10 units per model, with an answer within 24 business hours.

The visual doesn't cost more. A photo, a color gradient, a logo with fifteen shades: in screen printing, every extra shade complicates and raises the setup cost. In DTG, the printer renders the file as it is, whatever its color complexity.

It's the technology that made single-unit personalization accessible. Before DTG, printing a single personalized garment at a reasonable price was practically impossible: this technique is what opened the door to print on demand as it exists today, from creator merch to collections in small runs.

Its limits, stated honestly

No technique is perfect everywhere, and DTG has its own.

Pretreatment on dark fabric. On a black or navy t-shirt, white ink has to be laid down as an undercoat first so the colors come out right: an extra step, part of the workshop's know-how, which the quote takes into account.

The fabric choice matters. DTG gives its best results on cotton or mostly-cotton blends. On mostly polyester or technical fabrics, the ink grips less well and the result loses sharpness: not the right choice for a softshell jacket or a technical sports jersey.

The per-unit price stays high at volume. With no tooling to spread out, each print costs the same individually: an advantage on small runs, a disadvantage as soon as quantities rise, where DTF or screen printing become more economical (our full comparison of marking techniques details the thresholds).

From test to production run

To judge the size and the fabric before a first DTG run, at tknp.io you can buy the blank garment on its own. Then a design launched in DTG can move to DTF or screen printing once the quantity justifies it, from the same file: only the setup specific to the new technique is added, like the screen for screen printing. The technique follows the project's pace, it doesn't lock you into a single order format. To compare DTG and DTF project by project, our DTF guide and our DTF or DTG comparison put the two techniques side by side.