Screen Charge

A screen charge covers the labor and material behind burning one screen for one ink color: coating the mesh with light-sensitive emulsion, exposing it under a film positive or direct-to-screen image, then washing out the unexposed areas to reveal the open stencil. Shops typically bill this at $15 to $30 per screen, and it's charged once per color in the design, not once per order.

This is the line item buyers ask about first on a quote, since a 4-color logo on a 24-piece order can carry $60 to $120 in one-time screen charges stacked on top of the per-shirt print price. A 1-color job with the same quantity skips almost all of that setup cost, which is why simple designs quote so much cheaper than detailed ones at low volume.

Here's the part that reassures repeat customers: once a screen is burned, most shops keep it on file, so a reorder of the exact same design and colors doesn't pay the screen charge again, only the per-shirt printing cost. We tell every client this up front, because it's the single best argument for keeping artwork consistent between orders.

Buyers sometimes assume the screen charge is padding a shop can waive on request. It isn't; it's real production time and emulsion tied directly to burning a usable stencil per color, and it only goes away because the screen already exists, not because it was never real.