If you are choosing how to put a design on a product, you are really choosing between three technologies: UV printing, sublimation, and screen printing. Each one wins in a different situation. We run UV flatbed printers all day, so we will be upfront about where UV loses too.
What is UV printing?
UV printing lays down ink and cures it instantly with ultraviolet light. Because the ink hardens on contact instead of soaking in, it bonds to surfaces other methods cannot touch: golf balls, leather, metal, glass, acrylic, and wood. It prints full color plus white ink in a single pass, so photographs reproduce accurately even on dark or clear materials.
The tradeoff is equipment cost. UV flatbed printers are expensive, which is why most print shops do not offer it and why per-unit pricing sits above screen printing at high volume.
What is sublimation?
Sublimation turns dye into gas that bonds with polyester coatings. It produces vivid, permanent color on mugs, polyester fabric, and coated blanks. Its hard limit: the surface must be polyester or polymer-coated, and it cannot print white, so it only works on light backgrounds.
What is screen printing?
Screen printing pushes ink through a stencil, one screen per color. At thousands of units of a one-color or two-color design, nothing beats its unit price. But every color adds setup cost, photographs are out of reach, and small runs are uneconomical because the setup dominates the price.
Side by side
| UV printing | Sublimation | Screen printing | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Materials | Almost anything rigid: metal, glass, leather, acrylic, wood | Polyester and coated blanks only | Fabric, paper, flat plastics |
| Photo quality | Excellent, full color + white | Excellent on light surfaces | Poor, spot colors only |
| Best run size | 1 to a few thousand | 1 to hundreds | Thousands and up |
| Weak spot | Unit cost at very high volume | No white ink, no dark surfaces | Setup cost per color |
Which one should you pick?
Pick UV printing when the product is not fabric, the design has photos or many colors, or the run is small. This covers most personalized and promotional products: golf balls, coasters, luggage tags, wallet cards, photo stands.
Pick sublimation for mugs and polyester apparel with light backgrounds.
Pick screen printing for thousands of t-shirts with a one-color or two-color logo.