How Black-On-Black T-Shirt Printing Works

Designing a black-on-black t-shirt can be tricky when you don’t know all of the options for how to make it happen. To help you create the blacked out t-shirt of your dreams, here are the three black-on-black printing methods we recommend to make sure your print comes out beautifully.

1. Use Our Bold Ink with black-on-black

At Real Thread, we’re known for our SuperSoft ink. However, our Bold ink is a great option as well –– particularly for printing a black design on a black t-shirt. It’s a high-opacity ink, meaning it’s going to leave a really vibrant print, that in this case will even have a little bit of a shine to it.

Printing with Bold ink will leave a little bit of a feel, but you’ll still have a very comfortable t-shirt and a cool muted black-on-black design.

2. Print With A Light Grey Ink

Okay, so this technically isn’t printing black ink on a black t-shirt, but it can have a similar effect. Printing with our SuperSoft ink in light grey will result in a more matte finish that mimics the look of black-on-black but with a softer feel to the print.

We recommend going this route if you want a more subtle print with less of a shine to it for your t-shirts. You’ll get to use our SuperSoft ink too, meaning the print won’t have a feel to it at all.

3. Print with High Opacity Black Gloss Ink

The last and brightest option on our list for a great black-on-black t-shirt design is to use a high opacity black gloss ink. This process is especially unique as we print first with black ink, then go over it with clear high gloss ink on top. Naturally, that means the print will have a feel to it, but if you want a black print to shine bright on a black t-shirt, this is hands down the way to go.

We recommend any of these three options here at Real Thread, they're all great options and just depend on the exact look and feel you're trying to achieve.

Ready to design and print some black-on-black t-shirts of your own? Give us a shout! We’d love to work with you to make it happen. 

And if you need any design help, be sure to download our Custom T-Shirt Design Kit! It has all the tools you’ll need to get started.