What Comfort Colors Actually Is

The shirt almost everyone is talking about is the 1717. 6.1 ounce, 100 percent ring spun US cotton, garment dyed, relaxed tubular fit, sizes S through 4XL, and around 60 color options depending on which supplier is stocking them. The thing that makes it different from a standard blank is the dye process. Comfort Colors dyes the shirt after it's already sewn together, then washes it. That's where the soft worn-in feel comes from on day one, and that's also why the colors look slightly faded and uneven straight out of the bag. It's intentional, not a defect. Some colors come from pigment dye and some from reactive dye, and that distinction matters more than you'd think when it comes to printing on them.

One thing worth flagging. Because the dye is applied to a finished garment and then washed, no two batches come out exactly the same. A sage green you bought last March might be a slightly different sage green this March. If you need absolute consistency across reorders, that's something to accept going in.

Why Everyone Wants Them Right Now

Gildan reports that Comfort Colors grew about 40 percent year over year in 2024 and is currently their fastest growing brand. Their CEO said on a recent earnings call that walking into a souvenir shop you used to see a different fashion brand on every table, and now you see Comfort Colors everywhere. Gen Z is driving most of the demand. The shirts hit a specific look that beats a nostalgic vintage tee from a thrift store but is actually new, clean, and sized to fit modern bodies. TikTok turned them into an algorithm thing. Every fundraiser, every sorority bid day, every band merch table, every coffee shop. The brand is also expanding into hats, bags, and women's-specific cuts in 2026 for its 50th anniversary, so demand isn't slowing down.

The Fit

The 1717 runs relaxed. Not oversized exactly, but bigger than a fitted retail tee. Tubular construction means there are no side seams, which is part of what gives it that easy unstructured drape. Most people order the same size they wear in normal clothes and it sits a little roomier. If you want it cropped or boxier, size up. If you want it more fitted, size down. We've printed it for guys, girls, kids, dads, every body shape, and the feedback is consistent. It's a forgiving fit that works on most people without needing a size chart conversation.

Who They're For

Anyone who wants a shirt that looks intentional without trying hard. They're huge in lifestyle brands, beach merch, music tours, sorority and fraternity stuff, church groups, yoga studios, coffee shops, breweries, and small clothing labels that don't want to feel basic. They look best with minimalist single color prints, retro graphics, hand-drawn artwork, and type-only designs. They're less ideal for super complex multi-color photo realistic prints or anything that needs a perfectly consistent base color. If your brand is built on a clean modern athletic look or you need bright bold prints with sharp edges, a Bella Canvas 3001 is probably a better blank for you.

The Catch With Buying Them Affordably

Here's where it gets weird. The wholesale cost of a Comfort Colors 1717 in a mid-tier color, size S through XL, sits around 5 to 7 dollars depending on the supplier and the day. That's just the blank with no print on it. So when you see a printed one selling for 28 dollars on Etsy with a single color front, somebody's making a lot of margin. When you see one for 9 or 10 dollars printed and shipped, somebody is running on volume with thin margins. Both can be perfectly fine. The trick is knowing which type of seller you're buying from before you compare prices, because comparing a one-off print on demand shop to a local screen printer doing a 200 piece run is not apples to apples.

Print on Demand Sites

Places like Printful, Printify, and Prodigi will print a single 1717 with your design and ship it with no minimum. The catch is the per-shirt cost. You're looking at 18 to 28 dollars for a single tee depending on print method and shirt color, and most POD operations use direct-to-garment ink, which is fine but doesn't always hold up the way real screen printing does over years of washing. POD makes sense if you need exactly one shirt or you're testing a design before committing to a real run. It does not make sense for any group order over twelve. Past that line, you're paying extra to have a small order made one piece at a time.

Etsy

Etsy is mostly small one or two person operations using either a heat transfer like DTF or a small home press setup. Quality varies wildly and so does price. You'll find printed Comfort Colors for 18 dollars and you'll find them for 32 dollars on the same exact blank. The good Etsy sellers are genuinely great and worth supporting. The bad ones will give you a print that cracks and flakes after three washes. If you go that route, ask what print method they use, ask for a recent example photo, and look for the word "wash" in the actual review text. That's where you find out if the print is going to last.

Online Bulk Printers

Companies like Real Thread, CustomInk, Print Natural and others will print Comfort Colors at lower per-piece pricing if you're ordering 24 or 48 or 100 plus units. Their pricing tends to be competitive on volume, but watch for hidden setup fees, longer turnaround times, multi-day mockup approval rounds, and customer service that's great when everything goes smoothly and frustrating when it doesn't. They're a perfectly fine option if your timeline is flexible and your design is simple enough that nothing tricky comes up during production.

Local Screen Printers

This is where most groups end up saving the most money once they understand the math. A local print shop running an actual screen printing press can put out a 1717 with a one or two color front print for around 11 to 14 dollars total per shirt at a 50 to 99 piece run, depending on the shirt color. The reason it tends to come in cheaper than a national online printer is no middleman markup, no marketing budget to recover, and we're not paying to rank for every keyword in Google. You also get to talk to a human who can warn you that your design is going to have ink bleed problems on a pigment dyed crimson before you order 200 of them.

What Makes Screen Printing on Comfort Colors Different

Pigment dyed shirts do not behave the same as regular blanks under ink. Two real things to know. First, you cannot use a spot remover gun or scrub out a small ink mistake without pulling the dye out of the shirt. The dye sits on the surface of the fabric, so any cleaning product yanks the color right out and leaves a faded patch where the spot used to be. A print shop running 1717s has to slow down and not make ink mistakes in the first place. Second, dye migration is a real issue. The pigments in some colors, especially Brick, Crimson, Willow, and a few of the deeper reds, will migrate up into your ink during the curing process and turn your white print into a slightly pink or yellow tinted print. We test those colors before every run and use a gray base or dye blocker underneath to prevent it. Most experienced shops know this. Some of the cheaper online operations don't, and you find out when your shirts show up looking off.

How to Keep the Cost Down

The biggest factor is quantity. Going from 12 to 50 pieces drops your per-shirt cost by 25 to 30 percent on average. Going from 50 to 100 drops it again. If you can scrape together a few extra orders from people on the fence, the math improves fast.

The second factor is print color count. A one color front print is significantly cheaper than a four color front. A two color front and back is cheaper than four colors front. If you can simplify your design without losing the look, you'll save real money.

The third factor people forget is size mix. The 1717 carries an upcharge for 2XL through 4XL, usually a couple bucks per shirt, so if you can keep most of your order in S through XL the math gets better. Doesn't mean don't offer the bigger sizes. Just know that a roster heavy on 3XLs costs more than the same count in mediums.

The fourth factor is shirt color. White and natural are usually cheapest. The deep saturated colors like sapphire, brick, and crimson cost more from the supplier. Dark shirts also need an underbase if you're printing white or light ink, which adds to the cost. None of this is a reason to pick a color you don't want, but if you're flexible on shade, a lighter color often comes in cheaper on both fronts.

The Honest Take

If you want one or two shirts, print on demand is fine. If you want twelve to twenty and you're cool with whatever quality shows up, a careful Etsy pick can work. If you want a real run, fifty pieces or more, with prints that hold up and a price that actually makes sense, a local screen printer is almost always going to beat the online options by a few bucks per shirt and you'll have someone answering the phone if anything needs adjusting. We work on Comfort Colors 1717s constantly and our pricing is published inside the calculator. Plug in your numbers and see what comes back.