Digital Fabric Printing: What Do You Need to Know?

Digital fabric printing can feel a bit mysterious when you’re first getting started. What actually happens when you click “upload”? How do your designs become real-life printed fabric? What should you know before placing your first order?

This blog is here to demystify the digital fabric printing process and share what sets our approach apart here at Digital Fabrics.

What is digital fabric printing?

Digital fabric printing is exactly what it sounds like. It’s fabric that’s printed using digital technology. Just like your home printer sprays ink onto paper, large-format printers apply dye or ink to rolls of fabric using precise nozzles. This process allows for complex, vibrant designs with many colours to be printed in a single go without impacting the price.

At Digital Fabrics, we use two types of digital printing technologies to bring your designs to life:

Dye-sublimation printing
This method involves printing your design onto transfer paper, then using a high-heat press to bond the dye to polyester fabric. The result? Vibrant, permanent colour that won’t wash out or fade. The dye becomes part of the fabric, not just printed on top of it.

Direct-to-fabric printing
This method prints your design directly onto natural fabrics like cotton or linen. After printing, the fabric goes through a high-heat fixation process to lock in the colour. It’s the ideal option for customers looking to print on beautiful, natural fabric bases.

Both methods use water-based inks that are kinder to the environment, with no solvents or plastic components.

How Digital Fabrics print your fabric online:

Wondering what happens after you upload your file?

Here’s a peek behind the scenes at Digital Fabrics:

1. You upload your design using our easy online uploader
2. We process your file using specific software that prepares it for printing
3. We print your design either directly onto the fabric or via transfer paper
4. We transfer or fixate the design using our heat press technology
5. We check for quality before carefully packing and sending your order

Start to finish, it’s a surprisingly fast and seamless process. We even offer express turnaround for those on tight deadlines.

Can’t wait to get started? You can order your fabric online here.

What makes Digital Fabrics different?

There are lots of fabric printers out there, so what makes our process unique?

• Australian production: we print everything in-house in our studio in Sydney’s inner-west, meaning faster lead times and consistent local quality. We can personally check every order to make sure it’s perfect. We don’t send anything overseas to be printed.
• Better colour results: our experienced team performs test prints and careful file handling to get your colours as close as possible to your vision. We can provide you with advice about how to get the best results and you can order a Strike Off to test the colour on your final fabric before printing.
• No minimums: You can order as little as one metre to start — perfect for testing or one-off projects. We’re super-passionate about reducing waste in the textile industry and we hope that by offering you just 1m of fabric, we can reduce the amount of fabric that’s printed and then goes to waste.
• Real support: We’re not just a website. You can contact our helpful Australian-based team with any questions you might have. We’ll even give you help with your file setup from our in-house design team if you’re really stuck.
• Custom services: It doesn’t just stop at fabric printing. Here at Digital Fabrics we also manufacture textile-based products that can feature your custom printed fabric. Need your own labels stitched in? Custom finishing? We’re here for it and happy to help.

What do you need to know before you start printing your own fabric

Printing your own fabric is exciting, but a little prep can go a long way to ensure you get the best results. Here’s what we wish every first-time customer knew:

• Start small
  We recommend ordering a 1 metre sample to test your design, colour and fabric choice. This gives you a chance to see how your design feels, looks and drapes in real life.
• Check your file specs
  Make sure your file is set up at the right dimensions and resolution. Our uploader supports JPG and PNG files, and we recommend 150 to 300 DPI for best results.
• Know your fabric base
  Your choice of fabric affects how the colours print. A design printed on cotton will look different to the same file printed on polyester. Order a strike off if colour accuracy is important (you can do this in minutes using our Online Uploader).
• Design for the medium
  Remember that we can’t print white ink. Any white in your design will appear as the base fabric colour. Use this to your advantage when creating high-contrast or minimal designs.
• Plan for small shifts
  Some natural fabric bases may shrink slightly during printing and finishing. If your project requires precise placement, allow for a little movement. If you’re unsure, you can always ask!

Bonus advice for new designers

The most important thing is to start. You don’t need to be a professional graphic designer to create beautiful custom fabric. If you’re not sure how to prepare your file, we can help with that too.

Once you’ve got a creative vision in mind, upload your design, order a test run and see your idea come to life on fabric. It’s pure magic!