DSF

i am curious to know which will produce better quailty and lower cost is vinyl better or is sublimation as i will have the choice of doing either but im not sure which to offer to my customers. i already have my first job and i asked the client if they would like the t-shirt printed in sublimation heat transfer or if vinyl heat transfer would be okay and they said to me "which ever you feel is better"

this is a one off t-shirt

what colour are the garments ... sub ONLY works on polyester ... and sub can only make things darker ..... and you only get true colours on white polyester ....

the garments are White, and the colour of the design she wants printing is just blue.

fabric?
I use vinyl whenever i can ..... can use on any fabric, and we get less faults, but not for shading or multi colour

haha sorry i ment the t-shirt it white. can you do layer building with vinyl ?

Cost of vinyl will in most cases exceed that of a sublimation paper and ink but sublimation has far more limitations with regards the garments it can be used as mentioned on but blue on a white polyester shirt should be cheaper with sublimation in your case

There's benefits and drawbacks of each really, Vinyl is the best option for transferring onto dark fabrics, but doesn't allow shading and full colours. Whereas sublimation works best on the polyester shirts, and can print full colour - and in most cases is cheaper.

Solvent ink vinyl printers offer colour and shading options but there is the initial investment in the machine although you can always outsource the production.

Theres also dark print pigment transfer paper that allows you to print onto dark garmets with a std pigment printer, yes it has a little feel to it however no more than a DTG printers which has a white ink backer.

I've built 2 & 3 layers with vinyl but for a white t shirt sub is great and saves time and work fitting the layers together.