Open-End (Carded) Cotton

Open-end cotton — also called carded cotton — is spun using a rotor rather than a ring, a process called open-end or rotor spinning that twists fibers into a bulkier, looser yarn than ringspun cotton. It typically lands in the 10s to 20s singles count range, coarser than ringspun's usual 20s to 40s, because the fibers lie less parallel and leave more short ends protruding from the strand.

Gildan's 2000 and 5000 Heavy Cotton tees, both around 5.3 oz, are the industry's default open-end blank — the shirt on every 5K packet, church cookout, and campaign fundraiser table because it's the cheapest 100% cotton weight available in bulk. We print thousands of these a month and they're a genuine workhorse; just don't expect the halftone gradient that flew on a Bella+Canvas 3001 to look identical here.

Choose open-end cotton for single- or two-color spot designs, bold text, and simple logos where the shirt is disposable branding rather than a retail product. Skip it for fine detail, subtle color separations, or a soft-touch discharge finish, where the rougher, hairier yarn surface shows through as a slightly fuzzier print edge.

The common misconception is that "100% cotton" alone tells you what you're getting — it doesn't. A 5.3 oz open-end tee and a 4.5 oz ringspun tee are both "100% cotton" but feel and print completely differently; the fiber-content line on a spec sheet is only half the story, and open-end spinning is why a $3 blank feels different from a $6 one at the same weight.