Custom Work Shirts: Fabric Weights, Logo Size, Crew Sizing

Key Takeaways

• No woven button-down here; our custom work shirts are a heavy pocket tee, long sleeve, polo, or hoodie.
• Fabric weight predicts how a shirt survives; thread and patches run up to 4 by 4 inches, and printing runs larger.
• Collect a brand and size from each person, and keep one design across sizes and colors.
• No minimum: one shirt is a real order.

Table of Contents

• Which Work Shirts We Make (and the One We Don't)
• Fabric Weight: What 6 Ounces Means on the Job
• Embroidery, Printing, or a Patch on a Custom Work Shirt
• Safety Green and High Visibility: What a Tee Is and Isn't
• Sizing a Crew for Custom Work Shirts in One Order
• Frequently Asked Questions
• Pick the Shirt by the Job

We do not make the snap-front shop shirt with a name patch over the pocket. We make the shirts most crews wear on the job or under a vest: heavyweight pocket tees, long sleeves, polos, and hoodies. Your logo goes on in thread, in full-color print, or as a hand-stitched patch.

Three decisions matter when you order custom work shirts for a crew of four or forty. The shirt has to survive your work, the logo has to go on right, and every size has to be right in one order.

Which Work Shirts We Make (and the One We Don't)

We carry eight garments that do a work shirt's job, and none of them has buttons down the front. Every one is a knit: a tee, a long-sleeve tee, or a polo. The woven button-down and the snap-front shirt with a name badge are not in our catalog. A crew that needs one should buy it from a workwear supplier.

For everyone else, here is what we make, with the numbers from each maker's own spec sheet.

Weights and blends come from the SS Activewear and SanMar data libraries as of September 2026. Heather and safety colors in several of these shirts are cotton and polyester blends, and each product page lists the exact blend by color.

A hoodie belongs on this list for cold-season crews. We carry a Carhartt loose-fit midweight hoodie plus lighter Gildan and Jerzees fleece. They take the same logo as the tees. The rest of this page stays on shirts.

If you already know the garment, browse custom apparel and open any product to see your logo on it before you order.

Fabric Weight: What 6 Ounces Means on the Job

Weight is the number on the spec sheet that predicts how a work shirt lives. The number is the weight of one square yard of fabric. A landscaper on a trades forum put the stakes plainly: outdoor work destroyed shirts faster than they could be replaced. A 6.75 ounce Carhartt tee carries more than half again the cloth of a 4.2 ounce retail tee.

More cloth means more resistance to abrasion and less light through the fabric. It also means a shirt that reads as a uniform, and a hotter shirt.

Heavy cotton, 6 to 6.75 ounces. The Carhartt CTK87 and the Gildan Ultra Cotton pair suit concrete, framing, fabrication, and any work that rubs the shirt against material all day. They take a hard wash and hold their shape. Wash them once before the first day; a carpenter's advice to every new laborer is to break a shirt in before wearing it to work.

Mid-weight cotton and blends, 5.4 ounces. The Port & Co long sleeve and the Jerzees polo are lighter to wear and quicker to dry. The Jerzees blend is pre-shrunk and built to move sweat, which suits service techs who wash a shirt every night.

Polyester performance, 3.5 to 4.1 ounces. The Core 365 polo, the Port & Co performance tee, and the Paragon hooded long sleeve pull sweat off the skin and dry fast. Thin polyester shows every contour and gives up some abrasion resistance. It carries a print well, and printing is the default method on apparel in Griwolfe's Design Studio. For a landscaping or paving crew in July, a thin work shirt is the right call.

Long sleeves for sun. Outdoor crews ask for long sleeves in summer as often as in winter, because a sleeve beats sunscreen on a ten-hour day. One construction owner's spouse went looking for "hooded, UV rated long sleeve sun shirts," thin and loose, that a shop could put a logo on. The Paragon 220 is that shirt: a two-ply hood, UPF 50+, and a 3.5 ounce polyester that stays loose. You can order custom long sleeve t-shirts in the same design as the crew's short sleeves.

The person who meets the customer usually needs a different shirt from the person who runs the saw. Put the polo on the estimator and the pocket tee on the crew; both can carry the same logo in the same order. The Jerzees and Core 365 polos above cover the front-of-house half.

Embroidery, Printing, or a Patch on a Custom Work Shirt

Thread, ink, or a stitched patch each hold up on a work shirt; the wash and the logo decide which one. All three are offered on every shirt above and chosen per side of the shirt in the Design Studio. There is no minimum on any of them.

The sizes in the table are production limits, phrased as maximums. A specific shirt can carry a smaller box, and the design proof confirms the exact size before we make anything.

Two details change the plan on a pocket tee. The first is the pocket itself. It occupies the left chest, so the logo goes to the right chest or another placement from the product page's own list.

The second is names. Each placement on a shirt carries its own design, so a name is a second design at the right chest or the sleeve. A shirt with a name is a different design from the plain one, and the cart groups it that way.

A landscaping owner asked for shirts with "custom logo on front and minimal text on back," then asked whether washing degraded the logo. A well-made embroidered mark and a well-made print both outlast the shirt. The failures buyers describe trace back to the shop that made them. Our guide to how printed t-shirts hold up to washing covers that in detail.

For a crew, put a small mark in thread on the shirt that gets washed hardest. Save printing for the back of the shirt, or for a full-color logo that thread cannot carry.

Safety Green and High Visibility: What a Tee Is and Isn't

A safety green work shirt is a high-visibility color, not a rated high-visibility garment. Gildan's spec sheets for the Ultra Cotton pocket tee and pocket long sleeve state that Safety Green complies with the ANSI/ISEA 107 high-visibility standard. That tells you the color meets the standard's color requirement. It does not make the shirt a rated garment.

The rating that matters on a road is the garment class. Federal rule 23 CFR Part 634 covers every worker on foot within the right-of-way of a Federal-aid highway, including construction, maintenance, survey, and utility crews. They must wear high-visibility safety apparel meeting ANSI/ISEA 107 Performance Class 2 or 3. That class rates the whole garment, including how it shows up at night, and a plain colored tee does not carry it.

Crews that need the rating buy a rated vest or shirt from a safety supplier. The Safety Green tee goes under the vest or on the yard. Some crews pick it on their own; one tradesman's advice to new laborers was "plain colored shirts or safety green shirts."

For a logo on a custom work shirt, Safety Green is a good canvas, and a dark navy or black mark reads at a distance. Keep the logo on the sleeve if the crew wears vests, since a vest covers the chest and the upper back.

Sizing a Crew for Custom Work Shirts in One Order

Collect a brand and a size from each person, not a letter alone. "Large" on the Carhartt CTK87 is a loose fit. "Large" on the Gildan 2300 is a classic fit, and the two do not wear the same. Crews are not one shape either; a new laborer on a construction forum noted that at 6 feet 2 inches she fit men's sizes better.

Then read the size grid on the product page of the shirt you are ordering. The grid lists every size that shirt comes in. The Carhartt runs S to 4XL, the Gildan 2300 and Jerzees polo S to 5XL, the Core 365 polo XS to 6XL. Where a shirt carries a per-shirt upcharge on extended or tall sizes, the grid shows it, so nothing waits to surprise you at checkout.

Keep one design. Shirts sharing the same design, customization method, size, and placement count together as one design group in the cart. One design can span shirt styles and colors, and the cart lets you add another product to a design. That is how the estimator's polo and the crew's pocket tees carry the same left-chest mark in one design.

A name on a shirt is a design change, so the named shirts group on their own. A crew with names on every shirt means one design per person.

Order one first when a size is in doubt. There is no minimum, so buy a single Carhartt in the crew's most common size and put it on the person who will wear it. An undecorated sample is also available on request for a small fee plus shipping. The single custom shirt is the surer check, though, because it shows the logo too (a one-unit custom order is not refundable).

What a Crew Order Looks Like at Griwolfe

The order itself runs like any business order with us; the custom hats for business guide walks the steps. You see the logo on the shirt in the Design Studio before you pay.

What a crew buyer needs is the calendar. We email a production-ready design proof within 1 to 2 business days of the order, with unlimited revisions before you approve it. Standard production is 2 to 3 weeks for embroidery and printing, counted from approval. A patch runs 4 to 6 weeks, and rush is available on request if you contact us before ordering.

Shipping is free on U.S. orders, and there is no setup fee and no artwork fee. An eight-person crew order costs the eight shirts and their customization, and unlike a uniform rental, the crew owns the shirts.

Workers notice the difference too. On a construction forum, a new hire had two thin logo tees and a cap deducted from their pay. The reply from the trade was that they were "$8 T-shirts." A 6 ounce shirt with a stitched mark doesn't read that way.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do you make button-up or snap-front work shirts?

No, Griwolfe carries no woven button-down or snap-front work shirt. Our work shirts are heavyweight pocket tees, long-sleeve tees, and polos from Carhartt, Gildan, Port & Co, Paragon, Jerzees, and Core 365. Hoodies cover cold weather. A crew that needs a snap-front shop shirt with a name badge should buy it from a workwear supplier.

What is the most durable way to put a logo on a work shirt?

For a small mark that gets washed hard, an embroidered work shirt wins. Thread is stitched through the fabric, so it stands up to hard washing and abrasion. It runs up to 4 by 4 inches at the chest. For a big back mark or a full-color logo, printing is the right method, and a well-made print also outlasts the shirt.

Can I put employee names on work shirts?

Yes, each placement on a shirt carries its own design in the Design Studio. A name goes on the right chest or the sleeve as a second design. A shirt with a name is a different design from the plain one, so named shirts group separately in the cart. One name on one shirt is a normal order.

Is a safety green t-shirt ANSI compliant?

The color is; the shirt is not a rated garment. Gildan's spec sheets state that Safety Green meets the ANSI/ISEA 107 high-visibility color standard. Workers on foot in a Federal-aid highway right-of-way must wear Performance Class 2 or 3 apparel under 23 CFR 634. A plain tee does not carry that rating, so wear it under a rated vest.

Is there a minimum order for custom work shirts?

No, Griwolfe has no minimum on custom work shirts. Order one shirt or one hundred with your company logo in embroidery, printing, or a hand-stitched patch. There is no setup fee and no artwork fee. Shirts sharing one design, method, size, and placement count together as a design group, so a mixed crew order stays one order.

Pick the Shirt by the Job

Custom work shirts come down to three calls.

• Weight by the work. Heavy cotton for abrasion and shops, 5.4 ounces for nightly washing, thin polyester for heat, and long sleeves for sun.
• Method by the wash and the logo. Thread for a small mark on the hardest-worn shirt, printing for a big or full-color one, a hand-stitched patch for the badge look.
• Sizes by brand and size. Then keep one design so the whole crew sits in one group.

Then open a product and put the logo on it. Design custom work shirts for your crew, pick the tee or polo they wear, and see the logo on the shirt itself before you order. Have a question about your order? Contact us; we'll get back to you the same day.