Are Gildan Shirts Good? A Print Shop Reviews the 64000, 18500 and More

Every shirt, sweatshirt and hoodie in our online design studio is a Gildan blank or its polyester Team 365 alternative: the 64000 Softstyle tee, 2400 long sleeve, 18000 crewneck, 18500 hoodie and 8800 polo, plus four Gildan youth cuts. This review is about how they behave on a press, in the wash and on people, including where they fall short.

Price is where an everyday blank earns its place. A screen-printed t-shirt runs roughly $12–$18 CAD each at 50 pieces and drops under $10 each in the hundreds, and a premium blank moves that number before any ink goes down. So is Gildan a good brand? For staff shirts, events, teams, schools and merch, it is a sensible default. If the brief is a thick, boxy tee that has to feel expensive in the hand, that is a different shirt, and we quote it separately.

The 64000 is a 100% ring-spun cotton tee at 4.5 oz/yd². Ring-spun yarn is twisted finer and smoother than the open-end yarn in many basic tees, and that is where the soft feel, or hand, comes from. The jersey is fine and even, so small text, thin lines and halftones keep their edges, and the shirt is soft-washed, so it doesn’t arrive feeling papery.

Gildan rates the fit semi-fitted and true to size, slightly slimmer than a classic heavy-cotton tee. Laid flat, a medium is 29″ long and 20″ across the chest, and each size up adds an inch of length and two inches of width, from S at 28″ × 18″ to 5XL at 35″ × 32″. The studio carries it in XS–5XL. People who usually wear a fitted women’s tee often find one size smaller fits in this unisex cut, and our t-shirt size guide shows how to measure a shirt you already own and compare.

The catches are the other side of the softness. A 4.5 oz tee drapes rather than standing stiff and boxy, and in white and pale colours it is less opaque than a heavyweight shirt. A big, solid block of ink also feels heavier on it than on a 6 oz shirt, which is a design note rather than a defect. Two practical extras: the label tears away, which matters if you are relabelling merch for your own brand, and the colour card is the deepest in the studio. Browse it on the page to design your own t-shirts online, or open the 64000 in the design studio and put your logo on it.

A style number is not a fabric. Heathers get their speckled look from blended fibres, usually cotton with polyester, and a few greys carry some polyester too, so the content label changes with the colour you pick. On the 64000, Black is 100% ring-spun cotton, Sport Grey is 90/10 cotton/poly, and Heather Navy is 65/35 poly/cotton, which makes it mostly polyester.

You can feel the difference with your eyes closed. More polyester feels smoother and slicker, drapes more, and wrinkles and shrinks less; more cotton feels drier and more matte, and breathes better. A team that orders half its shirts in Black and half in Heather Navy is ordering two fabrics, and the people wearing them will notice.

It changes the print, too. A heather’s speckled surface softens a solid ink colour a touch, which flatters a vintage-style design and slightly mutes a bright one. DTG wants cotton, so polyester-rich colours print duller that way, and we run them by screen or DTF instead. On polyester-rich reds and maroons, heat can pull the shirt’s own dye up into a white ink; low-bleed inks and a controlled cure stop it. One pair to watch on the 64000 card: Charcoal and Dark Heather look alike from across a room, but Charcoal is 100% cotton and Dark Heather is 65% polyester. Our guide to the best t-shirt fabric for printing goes deeper on cotton, polyester and blends.

The 2400 Ultra Cotton long sleeve is the heavier cotton in the studio: 100% cotton at 6.0 oz/yd², against the Softstyle’s 4.5. It has a firmer, drier hand than the 64000, it is more opaque in white, and it is built to keep its shape, with taped neck and shoulders, a seamless collar, a double-needle hem and rib cuffs with spandex that spring back after you push the sleeves up. Gildan calls the fit classic and relaxed, true to size; size down for a closer fit. Its published chest and length measurements match the 64000’s size for size, and the studio carries it in S–3XL and 28 colours.

The 8800 is a jersey polo, smooth like a t-shirt rather than the textured piqué knit many polos use. It is 52/48 cotton/poly DryBlend at 6.0 oz/yd², it wicks moisture, and it has a welt-knit collar and cuffs and a three-button placket with dyed-to-match buttons. Gildan moved it from 50/50 to 52/48 around 2025, so older stock can still carry a 50/50 label. It runs roomy: a medium is 21″ across the half-chest, an inch wider than a 64000 medium. In the studio its front print is a left-chest logo, the right size for a collared shirt anyway, with back and sleeve prints available, in S–3XL and 16 colours. There is more on staff polos on our polo shirt printing page.

The 18500 hoodie and the 18000 crewneck are the same cloth: 8.0 oz/yd² Heavy Blend fleece, 50% cotton and 50% polyester, with a brushed, soft interior. The polyester half makes them steadier in the wash than an all-cotton sweatshirt, and the air-jet spun yarn gives a smoother face with reduced pilling. Reduced is the honest word: any fleece fuzzes a little at the cuffs and under the arms with wear, and washing it inside out slows that down. The five Heather Sport shades are 60/40 poly/cotton; the rest of the range is 50/50.

The hoodie adds a double-lined hood with a colour-matched drawcord, a pouch pocket, and rib cuffs and waistband with spandex. That pocket shapes the print: our front print starts 3.5″ below the hood opening and tops out at 9″ tall, because the pocket is in the way below that. The back is open, 11″ wide by our standard and up to 15.6″ tall. The crewneck has no hood and no pocket, so its flat front takes a print up to 11.4″ tall, starting 3″ below the collar, and it is the better fleece for a big chest graphic or a large stitched logo.

Both are classic, relaxed fits, true to size, and people often size up in fleece because it goes on over another layer. A medium is 28″ long and 22″ across the half-chest, with a 34.5″ sleeve measured from the centre back. The studio carries both in S–3XL: the hoodie in 36 colours and also as a 100% polyester Team 365 TT400, the crewneck in 35 colours of 50/50 only. Our custom hoodies and custom sweatshirts pages cover decoration, or go straight to the page to design your own hoodies online.

Every Gildan garment in the studio except the polo has a youth twin in the same fabric, so a family day or a school order in adult and youth sizes matches. The twins don’t carry every adult colour, though, so check the youth row before you settle on a shade.

Gildan publishes no ages, so ours are an estimate: XS about 4–5, S 6–8, M 9–11, L 12–13 and XL 14–16. The numbers on a youth label, like 10–12 on a medium, are kids’ size numbers, not ages. A youth XL tee is 19″ across the half-chest and 25″ long, against 18″ and 28″ for an adult S, so a tall teenager usually belongs in adult sizes.

Youth sizes are priced as the adult garment and count with it toward the price break: 12 adult and 12 youth tees get the 24-piece price. Full-front and back prints are 8″ wide on youth sizes, against 11″ on adult. Open the studio with youth sizes showing, or see custom kids’ clothing for the full youth size chart.

A little, if you cook them. Cotton tightens up in hot water and a hot dryer, so any cotton-rich shirt can come out slightly smaller than it went in, and Gildan is no exception. Distributors sell the 64000 and the 2400 as preshrunk; Gildan’s own product pages don’t say it. Preshrunk fabric has been shrunk once before it is cut and sewn, which reduces later shrinkage. It doesn’t end it.

The 50/50 fleece, the 52/48 polo and the polyester-rich heathers are steadier, because polyester barely moves in the wash. We won’t put a percentage on any of it, because it depends on the colour’s blend, the water and, above all, the dryer. And before blaming the dryer, measure: Gildan’s spec sheets allow up to 2″ of variance on the 64000 and ±1″ on the other adult styles here, so two mediums can differ slightly straight out of the box.

• Wash cold, inside out. It protects the fabric and the print.
• Skip bleach and fabric softener. Both are hard on prints.
• Tumble dry low, or hang dry. Heat is what shrinks cotton, and what ages a print.
• Keep the iron off the print. Turn the shirt inside out or iron around it.
• Between sizes on a 100% cotton colour? If you tumble dry, take the larger one.

We print and decorate in-house in Ottawa by screen printing, DTF, DTG and embroidery, and the blank decides almost as much as the artwork does. Here is how each one behaves.

DTG belongs on the 100% cotton colours of the 64000 and 2400; on heathers and fleece it prints duller, so we run those by screen or DTF. No minimum on DTF and DTG — we will print a single shirt. Screen printing starts around 6 pieces and becomes the best value past roughly 24–50 pieces.

Our standard print widths are the same across these blanks: 11″ for a full front or back, 3.5″ for a left chest and 3″ on a sleeve, at 300 dpi, so an 11″ print needs a file 3,300 pixels wide. Height follows the art but is capped by the garment, from 14.8″ on the long-sleeve front and 13.6″ on the tee to 9″ on the hoodie. The t-shirt design size guide explains how to size artwork for each, and our guide on how to tell if a printed shirt is good quality shows what a good print looks like up close.

Sport and performance. For a team, a race or anything people sweat in, pick 100% polyester. The studio’s alternative is Team 365: the TT11 tee, a 3.5 oz/yd² polyester performance knit in 20 colours, and the TT400 hoodie, a 7 oz/yd² polyester tech fleece in 12, plus polyester versions of the long sleeve and polo. Polyester wicks, dries fast and holds its shape through a season, and it prints by DTF or low-cure screen ink. These are different blanks with their own size charts: a TT11 medium is 21.5″ across the half-chest against 20″ on a 64000 medium, so read the chart for the fabric you picked.

A heavyweight, boutique feel. If you want a thick, structured, boxy tee of the kind fashion labels sell, nothing in the studio’s tee range is that shirt. Heavier boutique blanks are quote-only: describe the feel you are after on the free quote form and we will suggest one. The same goes for jerseys, jackets, toques, tank tops and anything else outside the studio’s garments.

A different Gildan. Plenty of people picture Gildan as its heavier, boxier classic tee, the 5000 Heavy Cotton. That shirt is a point of comparison here, not a studio blank; the 64000 is the softer, slimmer line. One more thing Canadian buyers ask: Gildan is headquartered in Montreal, but its blanks are not made in Canada. What is local about our shirts is the decoration, printed and decorated in-house in Ottawa, Ontario.

Customers can design their own product free at yayaprints.ca/mockup-creator — 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. Each garment has its own size chart, with adult and youth tabs. For personalised team shirts, paste a roster into the names-and-numbers chart: each shirt gets a name on the upper back and a number below, costs a bit more, and you approve the full chart before paying.

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.

Every order gets a free digital mockup on the actual product before any payment, and nothing prints until you approve 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. A run in the hundreds is planned on the standard schedule, not rushed. 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.

Open the free design studio to put your logo on a real Gildan blank, send a run in the hundreds through the free quote form, or call 613-666-9292. Our custom t-shirt printing page covers methods and pricing in more detail.