29/05/2016
How to Wash a Heat Press Printed Shirt
Washing a heat press printed shirt really is not that difficult, all things considered. There are certainly more sensitive types of fabric and clothing, after all, such as those that should only be hand-washed. By contrast, heat press printed shirts can be thrown into the washer.
That said, there are still some rules to follow when using a washing machine to launder these garments. Here are all of the ones worth remembering:
Always wash these garments in cold or cool water. A few washes in warm water will not destroy a well-made heat press printed shirt, but it certainly will not help it either. As mentioned above, heat affects the print on these shirts, so it can soften and loosen it enough for the design to be damaged by other elements in the washer.
Then there is the fact that the heat can also affect the fabric of the shirt. Cotton shirts tend to expand and then shrink at the end of a high-heat wash, for example. Once the shrinking is done, this will leave you with a print that is suddenly too big for the shirt to which it is sticking. The result? An oddly wrinkled, crumpled-looking print.
Turn these shirts inside out before popping them into the washing machine. Another factor that contributes to the print wearing down is friction, after all. Washing them with the print side out only leads to the design being knocked into and rubbed by the other garments in the wash.
This is very much like taking a pencil eraser and rubbing it over a pen sketch. Do it several times and the sketch seems fine, but if you keep it up, you will begin to notice even the penned lines starting to blur and fade. The same thing can happen to the print on your shirts if you wash them with the print side out all the time.
Use the delicate cycle on the washer. Again this helps to reduce the friction bumping and rubbing your print design against another surface.
Never use bleach on a heat press printed shirt—unless you are spot cleaning it and keeping the bleach well away from the printed area. Bleach will mar a print more quickly than you might realize. The pity of it is that a fair number of laundry detergents now have a small amount of bleach in them. You may want to check the ingredients of your detergent before using it on your heat press printed shirt.
Never use an ultra-strong detergent on these shirts. For one thing, these often contain bleach, as mentioned above. For another, the stronger detergents can have reactions with the dyes used in heat press printing and can ruin the design.
