Sublimation Printing Services for Vibrant, No-Feel Apparel

Sublimation printing is the only decoration method that truly becomes part of the fabric. There’s no ink sitting on top of the garment, no transfer film bonded to the surface, no screen-printed layer you can feel with your fingertips. In sublimation, the ink is literally inside the polyester fibers — converted from a solid to a gas under heat and pressure, infused into the polymer chain of the fabric, and re-solidified as a permanent part of the textile itself.

The result is a print with absolutely zero hand feel. Run your fingers across a sublimated design and you feel only fabric — smooth, soft, and exactly the same texture as the unprinted areas. This makes sublimation the gold standard for performance wear, activewear, and any apparel where print comfort is paramount. It’s also the only print method that allows true all-over printing — edge-to-edge, seam-to-seam coverage where the entire garment becomes a canvas.

At Floorboard Findings, we use sublimation for specific applications where its unique properties outperform other methods. White and light-colored polyester tees that need vibrant, photographic-quality prints. Performance wear for sports teams and events. All-over print designs where the pattern covers the entire garment. And specialty items like polyester-coated accessories (mugs, mousepads, phone cases) for branded merchandise bundles.

The science is straightforward but the execution requires precision. Sublimation inks (a special formulation of dispersed dye in a liquid carrier) are printed onto a coated transfer paper at high resolution. When this paper is pressed against polyester fabric at 380–400°F with firm pressure, the solid ink particles skip the liquid phase and become gas — a process called sublimation. The gas molecules penetrate the polyester fibers, which have temporarily opened their molecular structure under heat. As the fabric cools, the fibers close, permanently trapping the dye molecules inside.

This phase-change chemistry is why sublimation prints are so durable. The dye isn’t on the surface — it’s embedded in the fiber itself. Sublimation prints don’t crack because there’s nothing to crack. They don’t peel because there’s nothing to peel. They don’t fade because the dye molecules are locked inside the polymer matrix, protected from UV degradation and wash abrasion.

The limitation of sublimation is also what defines it: it only works on polyester. The sublimation process requires a polymer fiber to absorb and trap the dye gas — cotton and natural fibers won’t bond with sublimation inks. For this reason, we reserve sublimation for poly-blend and 100% polyester blanks, and we use DTF for cotton and garment-dyed applications. Knowing which method to use for which project is exactly the kind of expertise that comes from producing thousands of custom garments in our York, PA studio.