Screen printing profit disappears into blank costs, screen fees, and ink math most shop owners never actually track. This guide breaks the real cost stack into steps so every order — one shirt or two hundred — pays for itself before you hit send on the quote. TL;DR Price screen printed shirts by stacking blank cost, screen fees, ink, labor, and markup — never a flat guess. A one-color print on a $3.50 blank needs a $12-18 retail price to clear a real margin. Multi-color designs add $15-25 per screen — quote per color or the fourth color prints for free. Orders over 24 shirts should drop the per-unit screen cost through tiered pricing, not a single flat rate. Why this matters Most screen printers price off a gut number: "$15 a shirt feels right." That number ignores screen burn fees, reclaim time, and the fact that a 4-color front design costs almost four times the screen setup of a 1-color print. The shops that stay open don't guess. They cost out the blank, the screens, the ink, and the press minutes per shirt, then apply a markup that actually covers rent and reorders. Skip one line item and the whole order runs at a loss without you noticing until tax season. What you'll need Blank garment cost per shirt, by brand and weight (a Gildan 5000 runs different money than a Bella+Canvas 3001) Screen setup or burn fee, per color, per design Ink cost per print — plastisol usage in ml, or specialty ink pricing if you're printing metallics or puff Press time per shirt, in seconds, including flash cure passes for multi-color jobs Labor rate per hour for the person running the press Order quantity, broken into tiers (1-11, 12-23, 24-47, 48+) A cost calculator built for apparel — the T-shirt HTV single color design cost calculator covers the same cost-stack logic for garment decoration and adapts cleanly to screen print math The steps 1. Calculate your blank garment cost Start with the actual invoice cost of the shirt, not the sticker price. A basic cotton tee from a wholesale supplier runs $2.50 to $4.50 depending on brand and order volume. Dark colors and heavyweight blanks (6 oz+) push that higher. Common mistake: pricing off the blank you bought once at a discount, then running out of stock mid-season and eating a higher restock cost without adjusting the quote. 2. Price screen setup and burn fees Every color in a design needs its own screen, and burning a screen costs shop time and emulsion regardless of order size. Budget $15 to $25 per screen for setup, and charge it as a separate line item, not buried in the per-shirt price. A 3-color logo on a 12-shirt order means three screens at roughly $60-75 total, split across only 12 units. That's $5 to $6 per shirt in setup cost alone before ink or labor enters the math. Common mistake: quoting a flat per-shirt rate that doesn't scale with color count, so a 1-color job and a 4-color job get charged the same. 3. Factor in ink and press time Plastisol ink runs a few cents per shirt for a small design, more for full coverage or specialty ink like puff or glitter. Press time matters just as much — a 1-color print takes roughly 15-20 seconds per shirt on press, while a 4-color job with flash cures between colors can run 45-60 seconds per shirt. Multiply press seconds by your hourly labor rate divided into seconds, then add ink cost per unit. This is the number most shops skip entirely and just call "labor, whatever." 4. Add labor and overhead Labor isn't just press time — it's screen prep, reclaim, and packing. If your press operator earns $18/hour and a 48-shirt order takes 90 minutes start to finish, that's $27 in labor spread across the batch, or about $0.56 per shirt. Overhead (rent, equipment depreciation, utilities) should get its own percentage, typically 10-15% of total job cost, added before markup. 5. Set your markup and retail/wholesale split Once blank, screen, ink, labor, and overhead are totaled, apply markup. Retail-facing shops commonly target 40-50% margin; wholesale or bulk-buyer pricing runs tighter, often 20-30%, since volume covers the gap. A one-color tee costing you roughly $8-10 all-in should retail for $12 to $18 depending on design complexity and local market rates. 6. Adjust for bulk order tiers Screen setup cost per unit drops as order size grows — that's the whole point of tiered pricing. A 12-shirt order and a 96-shirt order shouldn't pay the same per-unit screen fee. Build at least three tiers: small (1-23), medium (24-47), and bulk (48+), each with a lower per-shirt screen allocation. Anyone pricing bulk custom shirts without tiers is either overcharging small buyers or undercharging big ones — check the full breakdown in how to price bulk custom shirts. 7. Build in a rush and rework buffer Misregistered prints, ink bleed, and rush turnarounds happen on every run. Add a 5-10% buffer to cover reprints and rush fees for tight deadlines — don't absorb it silently. Common mistake: quoting your best-case scenario and eating the cost the first time a screen shifts mid-run. Cost benchmarks for screen printed shirts $2.50-$4.50 Typical blank garment cost $15-$25 Screen setup fee, per color 40-50% Target retail margin Spreadsheets that build this math for you Craft Calculators Lifetime Spreadsheet Vault – 140+ Pricing Tools, One Price 140+ editable pricing spreadsheets in one download, covers apparel, decals, tumblers and more. $59 Craft Price Spreadsheet Calculator - Accurate Costs for Materials & Labor Calculates cost to make, wholesale price, and retail price for general craft products. $9 Etsy & Website List Price Spreadsheet Calculates product list prices for Etsy and your website from desired earnings. $3 “If you're not charging separately for each screen color, you're printing the fourth color for free.”Troubleshooting Multi-color quotes come in too low — you're pricing screens as a flat add-on instead of per color. Charge $15-25 per screen, per design, every time. Small orders lose money on setup — a 6-shirt order can't absorb the same screen fee as a 60-shirt order without a tier adjustment. Build your minimum order price around actual screen cost. Dark shirts underprice the underbase — printing white ink under color on a black or navy blank adds a second pass and more ink. Add $1-2 per shirt for underbase work. Reorders get the wrong price — screens from a past job may need reclaiming or reburning if damaged. Never quote a reorder at the original screen-included price without checking screen condition first. Rush jobs eat the margin — a same-week turnaround compresses your schedule and increases mistake risk. Add the rush buffer before you quote, not after the job runs late. Tools and resources T-shirt HTV single color design cost calculator for garment decoration cost logic that maps onto screen print jobs A general craft pricing spreadsheet for tracking cost-to-make, wholesale, and retail splits across every product line A dedicated ledger for screen inventory — track which screens are burned, reclaimed, or retired so reorder pricing stays accurate What to do next If your shop also runs DTF transfers alongside screen printing, the cost stack shifts — no screen fees, but higher per-print film and powder cost. Compare the two methods before quoting a job that could go either way in how to price DTF transfers for profit. FAQ How do you price screen printed shirts for profit? Add blank garment cost, screen setup fees per color, ink cost, press labor, and overhead, then apply a 40-50% retail markup or 20-30% wholesale markup. Skipping the screen fee line item is the most common reason shops undercharge. What's a fair price for a one-color screen printed shirt? A one-color tee typically retails for $12 to $18 depending on blank quality and local market rates. That price covers a $2.50-4.50 blank, a $15-25 screen fee spread across the order, ink, and labor. How much should I charge per screen color? Budget $15 to $25 per screen for setup and burn time, charged per color in the design. A 4-color design costs roughly four times the screen setup of a 1-color print, and pricing needs to reflect that directly. Is screen printing cheaper than DTF or HTV for bulk orders? Screen printing gets cheaper per unit as order size grows because the screen cost spreads across more shirts, making it the better choice for orders of 48 or more. DTF and HTV have flatter per-unit costs that don't drop as sharply with volume. How do I price small screen print orders without losing money? Set a minimum order price that covers the full screen setup cost regardless of quantity, often meaning a per-shirt price 2-3x higher than your bulk rate for orders under 12 shirts. Anything less and the screen fee eats the entire order's profit. Do dark shirts cost more to screen print? Yes, dark and black shirts need an underbase layer of white ink before the color print, adding a second pass and more ink usage. Add $1 to $2 per shirt to cover the extra press time and ink cost. What markup should a screen printing shop use? Retail-facing orders should target 40-50% margin over total cost, while wholesale or reseller pricing runs tighter at 20-30% since volume makes up the difference. The split depends on who's buying and how much they're ordering. One last thing The margin killer isn't the blank shirt or the ink — it's charging one flat per-shirt price regardless of color count or order size. A shop that quotes a 12-piece 3-color job at the same rate as a 96-piece 1-color job is losing money on the small order every single time, and most owners never catch it because the invoice looks fine on paper. Related guides How to price bulk custom shirts How to price DTF transfers for profit Sublimation pricing calculator for shirts and apparel
