How to Select Standard Placement for Embroidery on Shirts

Shirts are the most common and widely used wearable that can be used as an effective promotional tool. From websites to customizing embroidery t-shirts, you can build your brand identification by embroidering your company’s logo and customizing them as a bespoke masterpiece.

Selecting a standard embroidery placement for your shirt for logo placement is one of the most crucial elements. How many revelations your logo or embroidery design will receive depends on where you put it on your shirt.

Are you unsure of the design’s appropriate size for shirts? Or how far down should they be from the stitches? Use this positioning chart for starting an embroidery digitizing business!

When it comes to embroidery digitizing for shirts, we often have questions about sizing. For example, how big should a design be on an adult shirt compared to a toddler shirt? If you’re in this situation, here are some suggestions for achieving the ideal embroidery design size and placement on shirts of all sizes.

By following these guidelines, you can create professional-looking t-shirt designs that work with any embroidery machine or digitizing software.

When creating a business plan for your clothing line, making smart decisions about your logo design and its placement on your work wear is crucial. It’s important to carefully consider the logo’s size, location, and position when digitizing it. The aim is to strike a balance between visual appeal and readability without overpowering the overall look of the shirt.

Remember that large embroidery may translate poorly to smaller shirt sizes like those for youth, while a logo that’s too small for a prime location like the front center will get little notice. Placing a logo on a shirt pocket that’s too big can also look unattractive and give off an unprofessional vibe. The left chest is a popular spot for t-shirt logo placement, but you’ll need to choose the right size for your design placement.

Left Chest Design placement works well with button-down shirts, polo shirts, or a small company logo. To ensure proper placement, measure 7-9 inches down from the top shoulder seam and draw a line from the middle of the middle line to the side seam. This is where the center of the design should be placed. You can measure 4 inches in from the center line if the shirt size is larger. It’s important to avoid extending the embroidery design toward the armpit region.

For short sleeves, the embroidery design should be around 3 inches square, with the design’s bottom positioned about an inch above the hemline and with approx. 1 inch above the cuff and centered on the shoulder seam.

Above pocket embroidery placement is perfect for lettering, simple and small embroidery patterns; ideally centered just above the pocket with standard size of 3” tall with maximum 4” width and can be extend according to the size label.

On pocket embroidery placement is a best fit for your logo with a standard digitize size of 4″ to 4.5″. However, you can embroider the design ½” inch down from top centered between side seams and the placement sizes may vary for small, medium and large size of the pockets.

Pocket Sizes

Following Are the Different Pocket Sizes:

Small Shirt Pocket: 3.5″- 4″ Inches
Medium Shirt Pocket: 4″- 4.5″ Inches
Large Shirt Pocket : 5″- 5.5″

Pocket label embroidery placement is mostly used for one-colored letters or simple logos with ½” down from top centered between side seams with a digitizing size of a maximum of 1 inch in height with proportional width. For the pocket label placement, we recommend you to digitize your artwork with a height of 0.5 to 0.75 inches.

Back yoke is more prominent & best fits with horizontal artwork(s). Also, yoke of shirts has many variables and it depends on how the shirt is made. However, the general guideline is about 2 to 3 inches down from the collar seam, centered on the collar. The standard size to digitize the artwork to embroider the back yoke placement is 3.5″ high with proportional width.

For the back yoke, we recommend you to digitize the artwork to maximum 3” in height for high quality embroidery results.

Long Sleeve embroidery placement is fit for simple to intricate artwork, letterings, and logos with a maximum height of 2 to 3.5 inches. Long sleeves embroidery placement enables more space for vertical embroidery depends on the personal preferences. However, the typical sleeve placement is approx. 4 to 5 inches down from the shoulder seam centered on the shoulder seam line.

We recommend you to get your artwork digitized with a maximum height of 3 inches for Long sleeve embroidery placement.

Cuff embroidery placement is mostly used for one-colored letters and logos with a digitizing size of a maximum 3 inches height with proportional width. Also, for accurate placement fold the cuff in half, starting with a button at one side and the button hole on the other side and make sure that your logos or letters should be ¼ to 3/8 inch tall.

We recommend to get your artwork digitized for cuff embroidery with a maximum height of 2 inches with proportional width.

When digitizing a logo for an organization, business, event, or school to be placed on a shirt, the left chest area is a common location. These logos must be flexible enough to fit on shirts of various sizes. However, standard sizes for logo placement on shirts are the most common sizes. For adult shirt designs, the size range is typically between 11 to 14 inches. A design size chart of 5.5 to 9 inches is needed for children’s shirts.

To ensure that your embroidered image on a t-shirt is beautiful and prominent, following the size guide provided by the design is recommended. Typically, the image size will range between 11 and 13 inches. You can use the length of a standard sheet of paper (11 inches) as a reference to gauge the size of the image when embroidered on clothing.

A left chest embroidery design should typically be between 3 and 4 inches wide. You can get a fair idea of how big your 4″ graphic can seem by folding the wide end of the piece of paper in half once more. Compare the 4″ and 3″ sizes, folding it in by about an inch, to see which is more practical for you. For a left chest logo intended to fit on a pocket, the embroidery sizes are 3.5′′ X 3.5′′ for adult shirt sizes and 3′′ X 3′′ for youth shirt sizes. Also, the pocket label embroidery size is 0.5”

To ensure proper placement, machine embroidered sleeve t-shirt graphics should be approximately 3.5 inches by 3.5 inches. This size works well for jerseys, sweatshirts, and athletic wear.

Now that you know how to call out placements and set your artwork sizing, provide that information to your embroidery digitizer. If you want us to digitize your artwork for machine embroidery, add a note to the placement with your artwork. Check out our blog on custom embroidery digitizing and see how things work.