Puff print is screen printing with one ingredient changed. That change is the whole thing.
Standard screen printing presses plastisol ink flat onto the surface of the fabric. With puff print, a foaming agent is blended into the ink before the press run. Everything else stays the same: the screens, the press, the curing conveyor.
The raise does not happen during printing. Coming off the screen, the ink is flat. It lifts during curing.
When the garment hits the heat tunnel at around 300°F, the foam cells in the ink activate. The ink expands upward and sets. What was flat on the screen becomes dimensional on the garment. Run a finger across a puff print and you can feel the edges of the design rising off the surface. That is not a patch or vinyl. That is the ink itself, permanently expanded.
Why it works on some designs and not others
The expansion that creates the raised effect also closes in on fine detail.
As the ink lifts, adjacent elements move toward each other: thin lines, small text, tight letterforms. On a well-designed puff file, there is enough space between elements that the expansion does not matter. On a file built for flat printing, the same expansion turns small text into a blurry wall and fine lines into thick blobs.
The rule: 18pt or larger for any text intended to stay legible. Solid fills. Bold outlines. Geometric shapes with generous spacing. If the design has hairlines or relies on thin negative space to define the shape, puff is the wrong call for that file. Flat screen printing or embroidery will hold the detail.
If you already have a design and are not sure, send it over. We can look at it and tell you immediately.
What garments it works on
Puff print bonds on cotton and cotton-rich blends. It does not bond on 100% polyester. It does not bond on dye-sublimation blanks.
On a cotton-poly shirt or hoodie, the cotton percentage matters. Fifty percent cotton or more prints reliably. Below that, a test print on the specific blank is worth running before committing to a full order.
Hoodies are the most common request because heavyweight fleece gives the print more to grip and the puff reads well on a large, dark surface. But puff works on tees, coaches jackets and sweatpants too. Any cotton-dominant garment where the texture adds something. See the puff print hoodie page for specifics on fleece construction and blank recommendations.
Layering with other print methods
Puff cannot go over a previously applied screen print. If you want a garment that combines puff and flat printing, the flat areas need to be cured first as a separate pass, then the puff print goes on top in its own pass and gets cured again.
This adds time to the job and affects pricing, but it is the correct process. Putting puff ink over an existing print changes the bonding of both layers.
The same logic applies to mixing puff and embroidery. You can do both on one piece, but the sequence matters and the two processes happen at different points in production.
Colors and setup
Puff print uses the same color-matching systems as flat screen printing, spot colors and PMS standards. The foaming agent does not significantly change how the color reads after curing, so if you know the hex or PMS code for what you want, it applies here.
Each color in the design is a separate screen. One-color puff print is the most straightforward. Multi-color puff adds screens and cost in the same proportion as flat printing.
White and black puff are standard. Most solid colors are available. Metallic puff finishes exist, but they depend on the ink and the garment. Worth confirming before you lock a design around it.
How to order
Start with your design file. Vector is best. High-resolution PNG works if the edges are clean and the file was not compressed. If the design was built for embroidery or a flat print with fine detail, let us know and we can look at whether it needs adjustments for puff.
Puff is screen printing with one ingredient changed, so it runs to the screen-print minimum. Minimums by method: 1 for dtf, 1 for dtg, 12 for screen print.
Tell us:
- What garment you want it on
- Where the placement is (chest, back, sleeve, left chest)
- Your color choices
- Quantities and size run
If you have not landed on a blank yet, we can recommend one based on the look you are going for.
By Michael Monfared, ThreadGhost