Best fabric for work uniforms across New Zealand: what lasts and takes a logo

The short answer, by kind of work

Start with what the day does to the garment. A kitchen brings heat and bleach, a site brings grit and sun, and a gym brings sweat and a wash after every shift. Then ask your staff, because a fabric they dislike stays in the drawer. A mix is the safe default for most teams, and the table below is where I would start each one.

Cotton, poly-cotton or polyester?

Cotton is the softest and breathes best, which matters through a humid Auckland summer, but it creases, dries slowly and loses colour first in a commercial wash. Polyester is the opposite: light, quick-drying and colourfast, though it breathes less unless it is a performance knit built to move sweat. Poly-cotton sits between the two, which is why it suits most teams.

How the fabric changes the logo

This is the part other fabric guides skip. A logo is either stitched into the fabric or pressed onto it, and each fabric takes those two differently. We stitch in-house and press in-house on our own heat press; the transfers themselves are printed by our transfer partner. Here is what each fabric means for your logo.

• Heavy drill and canvas are the easiest fabrics to stitch. They hold a dense logo flat without backing, so this is where embroidery looks its best, as on workwear pants and work shirts.
• Fine wovens like poplin need a lighter stitch. Stitching dense enough for drill puckers on a business shirt, so the design is rebuilt for it.
• Piqué and fleece have texture. Stitches sink into a piqué’s waffle and fine detail disappears into fleece unless the fabric is backed and the logo sized to sit on top. More on polos and hoodies.
• Light knits and stretch fabric pucker under a dense stitched fill, so a pressed logo often suits them better. The very lightest polyester can go shiny under a press, so we check those first.
• Some polyester bleeds its dye. The garment colour can creep into a white print over the following weeks, turning it pink on a red shirt. It is avoidable with the right transfer.
• Merino and wool knits take embroidery, with a backing and a lighter stitch.
• Softshells and water-resistant jackets take a pressed logo in a film made for them, and so does nylon, which holds heat and gets a cooler press. A heavily coated rain shell is still the usual no for a transfer, because the coating stops it bonding. See jackets.

Light and dye-prone polyester, technical jackets and nylon all take a speciality transfer film, and so do reflective and fluorescent logos. Our transfer partner runs those films in minimum quantities: ten transfers of each design at each size, or twenty for fluorescent. Standard full-colour transfers and embroidery have no minimum, and the quote says which your garment needs. For choosing between the two methods, read embroidery vs heat transfer.

Fabrics to ask about before you buy

Some garments carry a finish or a coating that changes what decoration does to them, so send the style code before you order and we will tell you what will work. On a waterproof jacket the needle puts holes through the outer fabric and a press puts heat on it, and what that does to its waterproof rating is not something we can tell you.

• Treated finishes. On antimicrobial, fluid-resistant or flame-resistant garments, we will not tell you what decoration does to the finish, in either direction.
• Hi-vis. We place the logo clear of the retroreflective banding. Whether the garment still meets its certification afterwards is not ours to promise, so confirm the requirement against the garment’s own certification before you order. More on hi-vis.
• Sublimated sports kit. We do not sublimate, so a strip with the design printed into the cloth comes from a kit maker. We can stitch onto sublimated kit, or press onto it with a film made for it.

Questions people ask