DTG on black tees looks patchy and dull — pretreatment fix

Question

Patchy, dull, or blotchy DTG color on dark garments is almost always a pretreatment problem, not an ink problem. The white underbase is only as good as the pretreat under it.

What to check, in order:

Even application. Blotchiness = uneven pretreat. Whether you spray by hand or use a machine, aim for a uniform, fully-covering coat over the print area. Hand-spraying unevenly is the classic cause.
Right amount. Too little and the white soaks in and looks weak; too much and you get a stiff, shiny halo and cracking. Dial the volume to your garment.
Cure the pretreat before printing. Press it (with a cover sheet / parchment to avoid glazing) or run it through the dryer so it's dry and flat before the white lays down. Printing on wet pretreat wrecks the result.
Garment matters. Ringspun cotton takes pretreat and DTG far better than a cheap open-weave or a poly blend. Fiber content and knit tightness change everything.

A pretreat that's even, correctly dosed, and properly cured is 90% of a clean DTG dark print. Nail that and the printer does the rest. If you can, post a photo of the patchiness — it often shows the spray pattern that caused it.

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Kontraktr Team · Accepted Answer

Spot on. The tell most people miss: **if the blotches match your spray pattern, it's application; if the whole print is uniformly weak, it's dosage or cure.** That distinction saves a lot of trial and error. One more: keep your pretreat, white ink, and garment as a *tested set*. When you switch garment brands, re-test your pretreat volume — the amount that's perfect on one blank can be too much or too little on another. Consistency in the blank is half the battle.