T-Shirt Print Placement Generator
Pick a garment, a size and where the print goes. You get the design width to work to, how far below the collar the artwork should start, and a to-scale diagram you can print or save as a PNG.
Print placement
| Measure | Inches | Centimetres |
|---|
True-size check
Print this page at 100% / actual size — turn off "fit to page" and "shrink oversized pages". The square below must measure exactly 1 inch (2.54 cm) with a ruler. If it does not, your printer is scaling and the outline underneath cannot be trusted.
1 inch calibration square
Design width by size, at a glance
General ranges for the selected garment. Use the lower end when the artwork is bold and full-bleed, the upper end when it is a light line drawing that needs presence.
| Size | Front centre width | Left chest width | Drop below collar |
|---|
How placement decides whether a shirt looks professional
The two mistakes that make a print look homemade are both about position rather than artwork. The first is printing too high — artwork that starts right under the collar reads as a badge stuck onto the neck, and on a body it disappears under the chin. The second is printing too small, which happens constantly because a design that fills the screen at 100% zoom looks like a postage stamp on fabric. A front centre print on an adult tee is usually somewhere around ten to twelve inches wide, which is far larger than most people expect.
The drop below the collar is measured from the collar seam at the centre front down to the top edge of the artwork. Two to three inches is the usual range on an adult tee: enough that the design sits on the chest rather than the neckline, not so much that it slides toward the stomach. Hoodies want a little more, because the hood bunches the fabric at the top and the pocket eats the bottom, leaving a narrower band of usable chest. Children's garments want proportionally less of both — a design scaled straight down from the adult version usually still looks oversized on a toddler tee.
Left chest prints follow different rules entirely. They are small, typically three to four inches wide, and they sit lower than people expect — roughly level with the armpit rather than up near the shoulder. They are also offset from the centre front, not centred on the wearer's left half. The diagram above places the rectangle where the finished print should land, so you can eyeball whether your artwork's proportions work in that space before you export anything. Our guide to t-shirt print placement measurements collects every placement's width, drop and offset in one table, and covers how the numbers scale across a size run.
Placement recipes, by what you're printing
The dropdown holds six placements, each derived the same way: a base figure for an adult M, multiplied by the garment's flat chest divided by twenty. The numbers below are that adult M baseline.
Front centre
The workhorse: 10 – 12 in of design width on an adult M, dropped 2 – 3 in from the centre-front collar seam to the top edge of the artwork. The width is the figure people find hardest to believe, because a design that fills a laptop screen is nowhere near it. Under two inches of drop and the artwork reads as a badge clipped to the neckline; well over three and it slides toward the stomach. Pick a hoodie and every drop gains an inch — 3.2 – 4.3 in on a hoodie M — because the hood gathers fabric across the upper chest.
Front centre — oversized
Takes the top of the standard range and adds two inches: 12 – 14 in on an adult M, 14 – 16 in on a 3XL, with the drop tightened to 1.5 – 2.5 in to push the block higher. This is the one that runs out to the side seams, and the one the tool warns about by name: sixteen inches is wider than most direct-to-garment platens, and the same file centred on a small hangs past the seams.
Left chest
Small and lower than instinct suggests: 3 – 4 in wide on an adult M, dropped 3 – 4 in, offset 3.5 in from the centre line to the centre of the design — not centred in the wearer's left half, which is the mistake that makes a logo look like it is sliding off the shoulder. A 3XL gives 4.2 – 5.6 in wide at a 4.9 in offset. The diagram is a front view, so the wearer's left appears on its right.
Full back
Uses the same width range as the front centre print but drops further — 3 – 4 in on an adult M, measured from the back collar seam, because the back of the collar sits higher on the body than the front does. Switching to this placement flips the diagram to a back view, so the silhouette you are checking against is the one the print actually lands on.
Upper back / yoke
A shallow strip just under the back collar, 5.5 – 8.4 in wide on an adult M with a drop of only 1 – 2 in. It is deliberately narrower than the full back range — roughly half to two-thirds of it — because this is where a brand name or small mark goes, usually above a larger back print rather than instead of one.
Sleeve
2 – 3 in wide on an adult M, and the only placement measured from the shoulder seam rather than a collar — 3 – 4 in down the sleeve. The tool drops the offset row here and draws the print square, because a sleeve is a curved surface and anything wide enough to reach round the arm distorts once the garment is worn.
What the diagram measures from
Every drop on this page runs from a collar seam to the top edge of the artwork — centre-front collar seam for front placements, back collar seam for back placements, shoulder seam for sleeves. The dashed line labelled collar seam on the diagram is that datum, drawn where it actually falls rather than at the top of the garment. It is not the only convention in use, which is the whole problem: the same placement quoted from the high point of shoulder is a larger number, and a print shop's spec sheet often doesn't say which it means.
Both datums are visible in the drawing. The silhouette is built from a body length measured high point of shoulder to hem, but the neckline is drawn as a scoop, so the centre-front collar seam sits about 0.7 in below the shoulder line on a tee and 1.8 in below it on a tank. To translate a supplier's figure, establish which datum they used, then measure the front neck drop on the blank itself and subtract it from any HPS number. Our guide to t-shirt print placement measurements sets out the conventions in full.
Two things the tool cannot know. Your printer's maximum platen area is a hard physical limit that outranks everything here — if the recommended width is larger, the platen wins. And your blank's real measurements: the whole page scales from one number, the flat chest, divided by twenty. Swap the generic 20 in adult M for a blank that measures 21 in and every width, drop and offset moves five per cent. Where the garment's own size chart disagrees with the proportions drawn here, trust the chart.
Frequently asked questions
Can I use one design file for every size?
You can, and many sellers do, but it is a compromise. A twelve-inch-wide design centred on a 5XL looks small and a bit lost, and the same file on a youth small runs close to the seams. The usual middle ground is two or three files — one for youth sizes, one for standard adult, one for extended sizes — rather than one per size. Export at 300 DPI for the largest width you plan to print, and let the printer scale down from there rather than up.
Are these numbers a specific brand's size chart?
No, and deliberately so. They are general ranges written for this tool from how the industry typically works, not copied from any manufacturer's chart. Blanks vary between brands, between fits within a brand, and between production runs, and printers set their own maximum print areas on top of that. Use this to sketch and sanity-check a placement, then confirm against the actual product's spec sheet and your printer's template before you commit.
Why is the printed diagram not full size?
Because a garment is wider than a sheet of paper. An adult tee laid flat is around twenty inches across the chest and A4 is a little over eight, so a full-size garment diagram cannot exist on one page. The print sheet handles this in two parts: the diagram prints scaled to fit, and the print-area outline prints at true size on its own page whenever it is narrow enough to fit the paper. The one-inch calibration square tells you whether your printer honoured the scale.
Does the tool know my printer's maximum print area?
No — that is set by whoever prints the garment, and it varies by machine and by product. Direct-to-garment platens have a fixed size, and some providers cap a youth garment's print area well below what the numbers here suggest is proportionate. If your recommended width comes out larger than your provider's platen, the platen wins. Check it before you export — our guide to print-on-demand image requirements lists the print areas and file specs for Printful, Printify and Redbubble.