Heavy Duty: Carhartt K87

The K87 is the default work shirt in the trades, and it's earned that status. It's 6.75 ounces of 100% cotton jersey knit in solid colors, which puts it well above the weight of a standard promotional tee. That fabric weight matters on a job site. The heavier cotton resists snagging on nails, shingle edges, and exposed fasteners better than a lighter shirt, and the loose fit gives a full range of motion for overhead work without riding up. The left chest pocket is a genuine work feature, not decorative. It's reinforced and sewn with a Carhartt patch, which means your printed logo goes on the right chest or you print over the pocket area and accept the slight texture difference where the pocket seam sits under the ink.

The side-seam construction on the K87 prevents the shirt from twisting after repeated wash cycles, which keeps your chest print centered where you put it instead of slowly rotating toward the armpit over the course of a season. One thing to know: the heather and neon colorways are cotton-poly blends, not 100% cotton. The heather grays run 90/10 cotton-poly, and the hi-vis Brite Lime and Brite Orange are 60/40 cotton-poly. That poly content changes how the shirt takes ink, especially with white or light-colored prints. If you're printing white logos on the Brite Orange K87 for roadside visibility, the job needs low-cure ink and careful dryer management to prevent dye migration. That's a detail a lot of shops miss, and it's one of the reasons we handle Carhartt printing differently than a standard cotton tee.

Cold Weather: Carhartt Rain Defender Hoodie

For fall and winter jobs in Virginia, the Carhartt Rain Defender Paxton hoodie is 13 ounces of cotton-poly fleece with a DWR finish that sheds light rain and morning dew. That weight is nearly double the K87 and the fabric behaves more like a light jacket than a sweatshirt. The DWR coating beads water on the surface instead of letting it soak through, which buys time during the kind of intermittent drizzle that doesn't shut down a job site but makes a regular cotton hoodie heavy and cold within an hour.

Printing on DWR-treated fabric is not a standard job. The same coating that repels water also resists ink adhesion, so the print area needs preparation and the ink system has to be matched to the finish. A shop that treats this like a regular hoodie will produce prints that feel fine out of the box and start flaking within a few washes. The 75/25 cotton-poly blend adds another variable: heat management during curing to avoid dye migration through the lighter ink. This is the right garment for a Virginia winter, but it takes a printer who knows the fabric. You can see examples of our Carhartt hoodie work in the project gallery.

Budget Tier: Gildan DryBlend 8000

Not every job needs a Carhartt. If you're outfitting a large crew for summer work and the shirts are going to be trashed in eight weeks regardless, the Gildan DryBlend 8000 is the practical choice. It's 5.5 ounces of 50/50 cotton-poly jersey with genuine moisture-wicking properties, not just marketing language. The poly content pulls sweat off the skin and spreads it across the fabric surface where it evaporates faster. In July and August in Hampton Roads, that's a meaningful comfort difference over a heavy 100% cotton tee that holds moisture and stays wet.

The 50/50 blend also means less shrinkage and better shape retention through repeated washing. The tradeoff is hand feel. A DryBlend doesn't feel as substantial as a K87, and nobody's going to mistake it for a premium garment. But at roughly half the blank cost, you can order twice as many and rotate them more frequently, keeping the crew in fresh-looking branded gear instead of wearing the same beat-up shirt all month. If you're running a crew of ten or more and need to keep unit costs down, this is the blank to start with. Run the numbers on our quote calculator and you'll see the difference at volume. The Safety Green colorway is ANSI/ISEA 107 compliant out of the bag, meaning it meets high-visibility background material requirements without an additional vest for some lower-risk applications.

Where to Put the Logo

Logo placement on custom work shirts is a different calculation than event tees or retail apparel. The goal is visibility from multiple angles in an outdoor environment where your crew is climbing, bending, carrying, and working at elevation. The standard configuration for most contractors is a left or right chest print on the front and a large back print. The chest print handles face-to-face credibility. When your foreman is talking to a homeowner, a clean logo at chest height communicates that this is an established company, not a pickup truck operation. Keep it tight, three to four inches wide. It should look like a uniform, not a billboard.

The back print is your actual advertising space. This is what the neighbor across the street reads when your crew is on the roof. Go large: 12 to 14 inches wide with the company name, phone number, and website in a font legible from 30 feet. Bold, high-contrast, one or two colors. A white print on a dark shirt or a dark print on a hi-vis shirt creates maximum readability from the street.

Sleeve prints are underused in the trades and worth considering. A logo on the upper sleeve is visible when arms are raised, which is the default posture for someone on a ladder, carrying materials, or working overhead. It's also readable in profile when a crew member is walking alongside a truck or loading the bed. Two to three inches wide, it adds a detail that separates professional custom workwear from a generic branded tee. Each additional print location does add to the cost, but it's marginal compared to the visibility you gain. If you're unsure about placement or sizing, send us your artwork and we'll mock it up on the actual garment before anything goes to press.

Hi-Vis and ANSI Compliance

If your crew works on or near public roadways, OSHA and the MUTCD require high-visibility safety apparel rated to ANSI/ISEA 107, minimum Class 2 for general roadway construction and Class 3 for flaggers and crews working near traffic moving above 50 mph. This isn't optional and it isn't something to guess on. Class 2 requires a specific minimum area of fluorescent background material in safety yellow-green, orange-red, or red, plus retroreflective striping that defines the human form. A regular orange t-shirt does not meet the standard. The garment needs to be rated and labeled as ANSI/ISEA 107 compliant.

There are two approaches. If your crew always needs hi-vis, order ANSI-rated safety tees and hoodies as the base garment and print your logo directly on them. The print can't cover the retroreflective striping or reduce the fluorescent background area below the class minimums, so the logo typically goes on the back between horizontal reflective bands or on the chest below the shoulder striping. The second approach, more common for general contractors and roofers working mostly on private property, is to order standard dark work shirts and layer a Class 2 safety vest when roadside jobs require it. Both approaches work. The right one depends on how often your crew actually needs the hi-vis rating versus how often they're on residential sites where it doesn't apply.

For crews that want visibility without full ANSI compliance, 3M reflective ink printed directly onto standard garments creates retroreflective logos that light up under headlights. This is useful for early morning and evening visibility on residential jobs, parking lots, and private sites where federal roadway standards don't apply but being seen still matters. We print reflective ink on everything from tees to Carhartt hoodies, and the effect is significant under direct light.

Ordering by the Season

The most cost-effective way to handle workwear for a crew is to order by the season rather than by the job. Screen printing cost per shirt drops as quantity goes up because the fixed setup, burning screens, mixing ink, calibrating the press, is the same whether you're printing 24 or 200. A contractor who orders 48 tees in March and another 48 in June is paying setup costs twice. The same 96 shirts ordered at once in February costs significantly less per unit and gives you a full summer supply in one shipment. You can price it out yourself on our instant quote calculator to see the exact per-shirt difference at different quantities.

For a Virginia operation running year-round, the practical approach is two orders per year. A spring order covering tees and lightweight long sleeves for April through September, and a fall order covering hoodies and heavyweight shirts for October through March. Most field crews burn through a shirt every two to three weeks in summer, which means a five-person crew needs roughly 40 to 50 tees to stay in clean branded gear from spring to fall. Plan the order around the season, not around the next job, and the math works out in your favor every time.

When you reorder, the setup is faster and cheaper if the screens are already on file. Same artwork, same color separations, same press configuration. The only variable is the blank. If you want to switch from the K87 to a DryBlend for summer, the print setup transfers directly. We keep every client's screens on file, so repeat orders for construction and roofing crews are some of the fastest jobs we turn around. All orders ship free anywhere in Virginia.