Sizing & Measurement
Midweight t-shirt
A midweight t-shirt weighs roughly 5 to 6 ounces per square yard, the range where most custom screen-printed and embroidered orders land by default.
Midweight t-shirts sit between roughly 5.0 and 6.0 oz per square yard, or about 165–200 GSM, dense enough to resist show-through on a standard print run but not so heavy that the shirt reads as outerwear. It’s the range where knit density, drape, and cost balance out for the widest variety of print and embroidery jobs.
The Gildan 5000 (5.3 oz) built this category almost single-handedly for decades, and Hanes’s 5180 Beefy-T (5.2 oz, despite the name) and Jerzees’ Dri-Power line sit right alongside it — this is the “default” tee most people picture when someone says cotton t-shirt. Full-color screen prints, single-location left-chest embroidery, and standard team-order jobs all print cleanly at this weight without special handling.
Spec midweight when a customer has no strong opinion on hand feel or drape and just wants a reliable, print-ready blank at a moderate price point — it’s the safe default recommendation for a first bulk order. Step up to heavyweight only when the design or the use case, a streetwear drop or a cold-weather event, specifically calls for more structure.
Buyers sometimes read midweight as a vague marketing term rather than an actual range, then get surprised when a “midweight” tee from one brand (5.0 oz) feels noticeably thinner than another’s (6.0 oz). Always check the actual ounce or GSM number on the sheet, not just the weight-class label.