# Designing with Heat Transfer for black Shirt, How to get the white?



## butterfly77 (Nov 16, 2011)

Hi There,

I'm designing a t-shirt design in illustrator for a black t-shirt. Part of my artwork is white in color. The heat transfer sheet I have is specifically for dark colored fabrics. My question is does the heat transfer sheet itself have "white ink" on it? In other words, where does the white color come from when I heat press the heat transfer sheet onto my black t-shirt? Thanks for any feedback and suggestions and hope your day is going great!


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## Rodney (Nov 3, 2004)

Are you using like an opaque inkjet transfer? If so, the whole sheet should be white and when your printer prints on it, it adds the other non-white colors to the sheet. So you'll have a white rectangle on the t-shirt with your design (unless you trim around the design)


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## D Ziner (Jun 13, 2011)

Hi there, I've been scouring the internet to find a heat transfer way of applying a white on dark garment that gives a relatively soft hand but the only methods I've been able to find are plastisol heat transfers that (from what I've been able to gather) work very well but yields a plastic, heavy feel, and the other method of course being screen printing with white ink. However, correct me if I'm wrong, but theoretically, you could create a design say, a silhouette of something, cut it out from the opaque paper, press it, and it should stick right? Or am I totally off base here?


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## Lnfortun (Feb 18, 2006)

Actually DTG printed image with white ink is softest. Softer than vinyl, opaque and screen print.

Opaque such as IronAll inkjet for dark and Joto laser opaque are Ok but you have to use a cutter to trim complex shapes. The later will crack in time.

As Rodney pointed out the white from transfer for dark is the opaque itself.


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## frankdoyal05 (Jan 12, 2009)

another way is,, print your designs on a no weed laser transfer paper,, it will transfer the white if it's part of the design and the background wont get transfer...or print your design on heat transfer vinyl which will take some weeding. You will need a contour cutter or cut the design by hand,,, which can be a pain in the ***


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## Lnfortun (Feb 18, 2006)

frankdoyal05 said:


> another way is,, print your designs on a now weed laser printer,, it will transfer the white if it's part of the design and the background wont get transfer...or print your design on heat transfer vinyl which will take some weeding. You will need a contour cutter or cut the design by hand,,, which can be a pain in the ***


Did you meam WOW laser transfer? That is very expensive.


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