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Left Chest Shirt Printing Placement

When printing custom apparel, there are many different options on design placement.

Switching up where you print on the shirt can be one way to create a unique look.

One of the more popular design placements is the left chest design.

Left chest designs are perfect for:

• polo shirts
• button down shirts
• company logos
• or a shirt that has a front and back print

Best yet, they can be very profitable because you can create a gang sheet and get more out of a transfer sheet.

Whatever the shirt is or the reason that you are pressing, do you know the proper placement for a left chest print?

Some people fear this design placement spot. Others are printing it wrong without even realizing it.

Applying custom transfers to the left chest can be one of the trickiest applications visibly.  A common mistake is to place the print too close to the edge of the shirt and when worn it is then under the arm.

There is a simple trick to avoid any mess-ups when choosing to print a left chest logo, no matter the design size or the shirt size.

How to Place a Left Chest Logo on a Shirt

While you have your shirt on your t-shirt heat press, simply draw an imaginary vertical and horizontal center line.

For the left chest, your vertical line will be just off the side of the collar.

Your horizontal line will start at the armpit seam.

This may need adjusted based on the orientation of your design, meaning if it is more portrait or landscape. Read on to learn about the particulars of each of these types of designs.

Tip: Most of the time, you will want to move your design up slightly above the armpit seam.

By using the collar as a vertical center, it will look great once the shirt is put on.

Regular Size Designs

For typical designs, center your transfer on the two intersecting lines (the right side of the collar and the bottom of the armpit).

Smaller Designs

Oftentimes, particularly on polo shirts, your client will have a smaller logo to be placed. These look best when moved to the upper portion of the intersection of the right neck and under armpit guidelines – but continue to use the right neck line as your centering point. See the flag design at the beginning of this post for an example.

Horizontal Designs

For horizontal designs, center the design on the right neck line, but move it above the armpit line.

Vertical Designs

Vertical designs can be a real challenge and are highly dependent on how big the design is. It’s become trendy to fill the entire right side of the shirt. Use the right neck line to center the transfer from right to left and experiment with different starting heights.

Don’t Let Your Eyes Fool You

It may not look exactly right while your shirt is lying flat on the heat press, but keep in mind that the shirt is flat. Your customer is not paper thin, but has dimension and depth to them.

Once the shirt is put on, there will be less area on the front of the shirt with part of it wrapping around to the person’s side.

This is where some mistakes are made. If the print is placed too close under the arm while on the press, once the shirt is put on, it becomes an armpit print instead of a left chest!

Larger shirts are probably messed up more because of the optical illusion.

With a larger size shirt on the press, when you use these center lines, the print looks like it is floating way out in the middle since there is more material.

However, when the shirt is actually put on, it looks great.

It’s that simple! By knowing this little trick, you can print a left chest logo with more confidence and less mistakes.

Learn how you can save printing costs by adding multiple left chest logos on one transfer sheet.