It looks both smart and professional to have a personalised hi vis vest on site, but what’s better: embroidery or screen printing? Both will effectively decorate your vest with your logo but with very different results and costs attached. So which should you choose? In this blog we will discuss the differences between embroidery and screen printing for workwear and give some handy recommendations. But first, why would you embroider or print your vest in the first place?
The Benefits of Branded Workwear
Branded workwear cuts a professional image and helps you stand out. In terms of job satisfaction, wearing a company uniform can help you feel like you belong to a cohesive team. Uniforms are a great equaliser, ensuring that no one appears “better than” anyone else. You are recognisably a group, working together.
For employers, procuring personalised workwear for your team is a great way to instill solidarity and pride in their work. Wearing a uniform makes you feel like “someone”. It’s not over the top to say that uniforms can impart a sense of identity and self respect.
Hi vis branded uniforms also ensure safety compliance on site. All team members need to be clearly visible and dressed in appropriate personal protective equipment clothing.
How Does Screen Printing Work?
In screen printing, inks are passed through mesh screens in a press to add logos, quotes, images and artwork to a garment. The more colours you require, the more expensive the process will be, since each colour requires its own separate mesh. Once printed, the garment is removed and tunnel dried, which sets the print so that it won’t wash off. Each garment has to be manually loaded and removed from the press and dryer, but apart from this, the process is fully automated, quick and easy.
The Benefits of Screen Printing Workwear
If you’re after a large or complicated design, then screen printing might be the best way to personalise your workwear. Screen printing works fantastically on lightweight garments like t-shirts because it doesn’t create any tension in thin material.
Screen printing creates a bold and graphic effect, which is why it’s often used in advertising. Take a look at these examples to get an idea of what screen printing can do.
Screen printing is also fantastic for employers who want to make a bulk order, because it is frequently cheaper than embroidery.
The down sides? Screen printing doesn’t suit thick or rough materials, which may rule out your preferred fabric. Screen printing also lacks the professional image of embroidery, it has a more commercial appearance, which may or may not be what you want.
How Does Embroidery Work?
In screen printing, the logo is produced using threads stitched directly into the fabric. While hand stitched embroidery does exist in some textile industries, commercial workwear is embroidered using fully automated, computerised machinery.
Around twelve different threads or colours can be used in this process, which limits the colour palette of your logo as compared to screen printing. However, most machines can embroider up to twelve garments at once, so it’s a relatively quick process.
The first step is to design your logo image and have this converted into the kind of file accepted by the embroidery machine.
Similar to screen printing, garments are manually “hooped” into the machine and then removed, but otherwise it’s a hands free process.
Unlike screen printing, no drying process is required to adhere the embroidered logo to the garment.
The Benefits of Embroidered Workwear
Embroidery works well with thick materials and business attire because of its prestigious appearance. Embroidery has that x factor that makes it look upmarket. Embroidery is suitable for most fabrics but there are a few limitations, namely, embroidered logos cannot be too large. However, for a professional image, you can’t go past an embroidered logo, as these well known embroidered logos attest.
