Customers blanch when asked to count the number of colors in their design. Even if designing your
custom t-shirts was easy, counting the colors in your design is hard if you don't know what counts as a color. Here's what you need to know:
Black and White
Black and white
do count as colors in your design. Black text on a white shirt is a one-color design, just like red text on a white shirt is. If it requires ink, it counts as a color.
That being said, a black and white photo counts as a
full-color digital print. The varying shades of black, white, and grey require just as many different inks as the varying color palette of a photo that's in color. Both require digital printing in order to keep your costs down.
Does This Count as a Color?
There are some elements to your design whose status as a color may not be clear.
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Customized team names and numbers do
not count as colors. The $5 per name and $3 per number includes the cost of the color.
»The color of your shirt does
not count as a color. It does not require an extra color of ink, so we do not charge you for it, even if it helps create part of your design. However, darker colored shirts are more labor intensive to print on than lighter colored shirts, so the price will go up slightly on darker shirts. The shirt color itself though is never counted.
Shadows, Outlines and Gradients
This is tricky. Overall, if there are two different inks that are going to need to be used, that means two colors, etc. So even if the color is the same, the variation from its darkest hue to its lightest can count as several colors. If the range is a gradient that subtly changes throughout, then it's Full Color. For visual examples you can check out this article on
color counting as some of these scenarios are difficult to visualize.
