Dip dye

Dip dyeing takes an already-constructed garment, not raw fabric or yarn, and lowers just a portion of it into a dye bath, most often starting at the hem and working up toward the chest, while the rest of the shirt stays out of the dye entirely. Dwell time and how the garment is lifted control the result: a quick, clean dip produces a hard transition line, while slowly raising the garment out of the bath produces a soft, graduated fade into the base color.

This matters enormously for print placement — a dip-dyed tee with a saturated dark hem and a light chest gives you a clean light zone to print into, but flip that brief and ask for a dark chest with a light hem, and full-front printing gets much harder to pull off with consistent ink coverage. We always ask for the dip line's location and direction before quoting a print job on dip-dyed blanks, because it changes where the art can live.

When speccing dip-dyed goods, lock in exactly where the transition falls, as a specific inch measurement from the hem rather than "about halfway," so reorders match and the print zone stays predictable.

Buyers sometimes treat dip-dye as interchangeable with ombré. Dip-dye can produce either a hard line or a soft fade, while ombré specifically implies a smooth gradient — asking for one and getting the other changes the available print area.