Custom Christmas Shirts: What to Order and When for Offices and Families

The date that decides a Christmas order is not the party. It is the day the shirts have to be in your hands, and four things stand between now and then: the design, the sizes and names, production, and the courier. Production is the only one with a published length, so plan the other three around it.

Standard turnaround on clothing is 1–2 weeks. Most apparel orders can rush — 4–5 business days or 1–3 business days, priced at checkout — and every order shows the dates it will be ready before you pay. At checkout the studio also asks “Need it by a date?” and checks your date against the queue: if the standard schedule reaches it, nothing extra is charged, and if it doesn’t, you see whether a rush can make it and what that costs.

Here is the calendar we would plan for a party on Friday, December 11, 2026:

Treat those as planning dates, not a promise: the studio shows the real ready dates for your order before you pay, and shipping is quoted for your postal code. The arithmetic is still the point. For a mid-December party, November is the safe month to order, because it keeps the rushes as a fallback instead of the plan. A party on December 18 moves every line a week later; one on the first weekend of December moves the order into early November.

Two kinds of order need more lead time than that. A run in the hundreds is usually screen printed and quoted directly, so ask for the quote in October and settle the dates when you confirm. And an unusual colour, or a long list of 2XL and 3XL, is worth asking about early: popular fleece colours and extended sizes can run short late in the year.

Most people searching for a custom Christmas sweater picture a knit, with the snowflakes worked into the yarn. A design knitted into the fabric is made to order on industrial knitting machines, with lead times and minimums set for retailers rather than for one office party. Printing onto a chunky knit doesn’t work either: the print breaks up across the uneven stitches. We decorate finished garments, and the one that does this job is a crewneck sweatshirt.

Ours is the Gildan 18000: the same 8.0 oz/yd² Heavy Blend fleece as our hoodie, 50/50 cotton-poly, brushed soft on the inside, with rib-knit collar, cuffs and waistband. It has no hood and no pouch pocket, and that matters more than it sounds. Our standard front print is 11 inches wide, and on the crewneck’s flat front it can run up to 11.4 inches tall; on a hoodie the pocket stops the front print at 9 inches. A band of knit pattern across the chest, or a full-front winter scene, simply fits a crewneck better.

The artwork decides the method. A knit pattern in two or three flat colours — white and red on Forest, say — is a natural screen-printing job: screen printing starts around 6 pieces and becomes the best value past roughly 24–50. A photo-real knit texture or a full-colour illustration usually goes on fleece as DTF, with no minimum and no setup fee. Two things to know about fleece: the brushed surface softens hairline detail and tiny text, so keep lines bold; and red or maroon fleece that contains polyester can bleed dye into a white print over time, so white on red is worth a word at the mockup stage.

On fit, the crewneck is a classic, relaxed unisex cut, true to size, in adult S–3XL in the studio; larger sizes go through the quote form. It is roomier in the chest than our tee but shorter in the body — an adult M crewneck measures 22 inches across and 28 long, against 20 and 29 for the tee — so anyone who likes length should size up. In Christmas colours the adult crewneck comes in Red, Cardinal Red, Cherry Red, Garnet, Maroon, Forest and Heather Dark Green, alongside White, Black, Navy, Sport Grey and Sand.

Our guide to custom crewneck sweatshirts goes deeper on fleece weight, pilling and print versus stitch, the custom sweatshirts page has the size chart, and you can put your design on a crewneck and watch the price change as you type your counts.

The crewneck is the party shirt, but not every Christmas order is a party. Choose by where the shirt will be worn:

Custom Christmas t-shirts earn their place in two situations. One is volume: a 120-person volunteer shift at a toy drive, where the shirt is a uniform for a day. The other is a family spending the holidays somewhere warm, where fleece stays in the suitcase; our guide to family vacation and reunion shirts covers that order. The tee is a semi-fitted 4.5 oz ring-spun cotton, true to size.

Hoodies suit the events that happen outside, and they ask for one change to the artwork: plan around the pocket. A design that fills a crewneck front has to shrink or move to the back of a hoodie, where the print area runs up to 15.6 inches tall. The hoodie comes in 100% polyester as well as 50/50, but youth sizes come only in the 50/50. Fabrics and placements are on our custom hoodies page.

The long sleeve is for sleeves without the weight of fleece: a heavier 6.0 oz cotton in a classic fit, and a good layer under a sweater. The catch is the youth version, which comes in S–XL only and in seven colours, with Red the only Christmas colour among them. The long sleeve shirts page has the full range.

A family order is one design across a spread of sizes, from a five-year-old to an uncle in 2XL. In the studio, pick the garment and the colour, open Youth sizes under that colour row, and type the kids’ sizes beside the adults’. Each box shows an estimated age: XS about 4–5, S 6–8, M 9–11, L 12–13 and XL 14–16. Gildan doesn’t publish ages, so those are our estimate; for a child between two sizes, take the larger one. A teenager past youth XL belongs in adult sizes: a youth XL crewneck is as wide as an adult S but about an inch and a half shorter.

Colour is where family orders go wrong. The youth cuts come in fewer colours than the adult ones, so a shade the grown-ups can have may not exist in kids’ sizes; the studio says so and suggests colours that do. Pick the colour from the kids’ side first. These are the Christmas colours, and where both versions exist:

Read across the Red row: it is the one Christmas red that matches on all four garments. Green is trickier. Forest matches on the crewneck and hoodie, Irish Green on the tee and hoodie, and the youth long sleeve has no green at all. Youth sizes also come only in the standard fabric (cotton tees and long sleeves, 50/50 fleece), so a family order stays off the polyester options.

The print scales with the shirt. Our standard full-front print is 11 inches wide on adult shirts and 8 inches on youth ones, so the design sits on a child’s shirt in roughly the proportion it sits on an adult’s. The price pools the other way: youth pieces are priced as the adult garment and counted with it, so 14 adults and 10 kids in crewnecks are one 24-piece order at the 24-piece price, even if some are Red and some are Forest. Different garments count separately, though; crewnecks and hoodies are two counts. If a cousin hasn’t confirmed yet, add a spare in M or L now, because one shirt later is a separate order.

The size chart for every youth garment is on our custom kids’ clothing page, and this link starts you on a crewneck with the youth sizes showing.

A personalized Christmas t-shirt usually means one design for everyone and one name per person: Grandpa, Mom and the kids’ first names on a family order, or each person’s first name on the office crewnecks. The studio does it with its Team names & numbers chart, under Add Text or Numbers (on a phone, tap Aa Text on the shirt). Each row is one shirt: a name, an optional number and a size. Type the rows in or paste a list straight from a spreadsheet, choose the ink colour, and the chart fills in the size boxes for you.

The name prints across the upper back with the number underneath, and our designer lays them out with your artwork. Switch the number off for a family order, or give it a job of your own: the year each person joined the family, or how many Christmases a team has played together.

Each personalized shirt costs a bit more than a plain one, and the extra shows on the order line. Before you pay, the studio puts the whole chart in front of you again with a preview of every shirt’s back, and you tick a box confirming every name, number and size; nothing prints until you approve it. Check the spelling with the person whose name it is. It is the one thing a designer can’t know.

Two limits. The chart lists the garment’s adult sizes, so if some named shirts are youth sizes, or you want the names on the front, send the list through the free quote form instead. And for a team putting real numbers on a holiday-tournament shirt, read how to order team names and numbers before you build the chart.

Company Christmas shirts are a group order with a deadline the party sets. Collect sizes and names in one place — a form with the size chart, a closing date and a default size for anyone who doesn’t answer — and order the replies exactly. Our guide to organizing a group apparel order covers the form and the chasing, and the bulk size breakdown gives a starting curve for anyone you can’t ask.

Large orders get volume pricing. In the online design studio the per-piece price drops at 12, 24, 50 and 100 pieces, and every colour of the same garment in one order counts toward the same price break. Orders in the hundreds are usually screen printed and quoted directly — through the free quote form, by email or by phone — and a large order gets the same free mockup and human designer check as a single shirt. In the studio, two designs on the same garment count together too, which suits a bilingual office: a French and an English version of one crewneck are a single count. We serve customers in English and French.

For a price anchor, a screen-printed t-shirt runs roughly $12–$18 CAD each at 50 pieces and drops under $10 each in the hundreds. Full-colour DTF sits slightly higher per piece with no setup fee, and every quote is free and includes a mockup. Fleece costs more than a tee; the studio shows the crewneck or hoodie price as soon as you type your counts.

Decide one thing before the design: whether the year goes on the shirt. “Holiday Party 2026” makes a souvenir; leave the year off and the leftovers, and the design, can come back next December. If the Christmas shirt doubles as the team’s winter uniform, see custom staff shirts. And if the boxes are going to more than one office, say so when you ask for the quote: each address is quoted for shipping to its own postal code.

One rule first. Cartoon characters, film lines, song lyrics and brand mascots belong to someone else, and plenty of phrases that feel like common property began as a lyric (“merry and bright” is a line from a 1940s song). Write your own line instead. Ideas that print well:

• The printed knit. A band of snowflakes, pine trees and zigzags across the chest of a Forest or Red crewneck, in two or three flat colours: the sweater without the knitting.
• The family crest. Your surname, the year the family started and a pine bough, with “Christmas 2026” underneath if the shirt is a keepsake for the photo.
• The bilingual greeting. “Merry Christmas · Joyeux Noël” set in two weights, which reads naturally in an Ottawa or Montreal office.
• Canadian winter jokes. “−20 and festive.” “Shovel. Wrap. Repeat.” “Powered by tourtière,” for a réveillon crowd.
• The office in-joke. “Out of office until January” on the back, and your own logo built out of snowflakes on the front.
• The team version. Your own team logo wearing a toque on the front, with names and numbers on the back for the holiday tournament.
• The family dog. A photo of the dog in a toque, printed in full colour. Photos print as DTF or DTG with no minimum, and our guide to putting a photo on a shirt explains which files hold up.

Text set in the studio is print quality, so a one-line design — “The Smith Family · Christmas 2026” — needs no artwork file at all. If you upload a logo or a drawing instead, a human designer reviews it before anything goes to press, the same as every other order.

A party shirt is meant to be loud for one night. A gift should still get worn in February, so if the crewnecks are a staff present rather than a costume, go quieter: a logo on the left chest, where our standard is 3.5 inches wide, and for the premium version, embroidery, with the thread stitched into the fleece. Ask for embroidery through the quote form.

Toques are the classic second piece of a Canadian winter gift, and they are quote-only: send the logo and the count through the quote form. The custom toques page covers cuffed, pom and slouch styles, and our toque guide explains why embroidery is the default on a knit. For the whole list — what staff keep, budget per head and the planning calendar — see our corporate holiday gifts guide. A gift set with embroidery and several items needs more lead time than a printed party shirt, so that is the order to start now.

You can build the whole order yourself in the free design studio: upload a logo, place it on a real garment, add print-quality text, choose colours and sizes, and order online without emailing or phoning anyone. Every order gets a free digital mockup on the actual product before any payment, and nothing prints until you approve it.

Every order is also reviewed by a human designer before it goes to press. A person checks artwork resolution, colour, sizing and placement, and either fixes the file or tells you what is wrong; it is not an automated preflight.

We ship Canada-wide, including the Greater Toronto Area and Greater Montreal; shipping is quoted for your postal code and shown before you pay. In Ottawa, ask us about pickup. Everything is printed and decorated in-house in Ottawa, Ontario, and nothing is drop-shipped from overseas, so there are no cross-border customs holds or surprise duties: one less thing to go wrong in December.

For an order in the hundreds, or anything the studio doesn’t make, use the free quote form, phone 613-666-YAYA (613-666-9292), WhatsApp the same number at wa.me/16136669292, or email order@yayaprints.ca.