Water bottles are an awesome way to convey your brand message, especially in the sports niche. Also, they are a great way to earn some money with a print-on-demand business, as not only people involved with sports are interested in promotional water bottles. In this guide, we will guide you on how to print water bottles on-demand that will provide you with a competitive edge on the market.

Step 1: Choose The Design Colors Wisely

When learning how to print water bottles on-demand, it’s important to know a few things about color theory. Thankfully, we will share a few tips on utilizing colors on your promotional water bottles to maximize your marketing efforts!

First of all, make sure to use different colors. For instance, it’s a dumb move to print white text on a white water bottle for an obvious reason. The bottom line is, don’t use conflicting colors when designing a promotional water bottle.

On the contrary, you should aim that your design color contrasts the water bottle color. For example, white contrasts darker colors better, and dark contrasts white better.

Other than utilizing contrast, you can use the same color with different tones. For instance, light blue works great on dark blue. You can combine this with other colors too, just don’t go overboard with saturation.

Last but not least, complementary colors are proven to work epic together. If you don’t know what complementary means, it’s basically a pair of colors positioned opposite on the color wheel. Gaze at the image below if you need a visual representation of this.

Step 2: Choose Where To Print Your Design On The Bottle

Once you’ve chosen the suitable color scheme for your promotional water bottle design, it’s important to know where to print the selected design.

Here, we will talk about the imprint area. This is the place where your design is printed on the water bottle. In ideal cases, you want to print your brand logo, brand name, and some contact information for the potential audience to reach you out.

With promo water bottles, the most common imprint types are one-sided and two-sided imprints. 

As their names suggest, a one-sided imprint implies your design on one angle, while a two-sided imprint implies your design on both angles. One-sided imprint is cheaper, while most printing services will charge more for two-sided imprints.

Think of the goal of your promotional water bottle design. If aiming for minimalistic vibes, then the one-sided imprint will be the best. On the other hand, if you want to provide more information without cluttering one side of the water bottle, you should choose the two-sided imprint.

Note: As some water bottles are curved, you may need to curve your print so that it fits the promo water bottle. This method is called circle printing, and you’ll notice it by the U-shape of the text or design on the bottle.

Step 3: Choose The Ideal Printing Method For Your Promotional Water Bottles

In the final part of our guide on how to print water bottles on-demand, you will learn of different water bottle printing methods and their advantages and disadvantages.

As a quick overview, the most popular promotional water bottle printing methods are:

• Screen Printing
• Wrap Printing
• Laser Engraving
• Full Color Transfer

Let’s dive into each individual water bottle printing technique!

Screen Printing

This printing method is the most widely available and is the most cost-effective printing technique out of all mentioned here in this post. If you are looking to print a basic design at the lowest costs, screen printing is the way to go.

But, screen printing has a few major downsides that set it apart from other printing techniques. First of all, the colors translated with screen printing won’t be accurate, and the overall design will lose its original clarity.

This happens due to the need to utilize a different screen for each color, resulting in alignment shifts and similar.

But still, if you are utilizing only one color for your design, screen printing is the most cost-effective option for you.

Wrap Printing

This water bottle printing technique is the best if you want to print a design that goes around the whole water bottle. You should utilize this printing technique if you have a wide logo or you want to print a lot of information on the bottle.

For example, the designs that work the best with the wrap printing technique are those that contain a lot of text that goes out of the imprint area.

Wrap printing is basically a screen print or heat transfer, with the only exception being that the print is placed on a PET film and placed on the water bottle afterward.

Keep in mind that wrap prints may not go fully around the water bottle. It often happens that there is a small gap between the beginning and end of the wrap, which may hurt the overall design. Also, designs that were wrap-printed will scrape off after some time, so keep that in mind.

Still, if you want to place tons of information on your promotional water bottle, wrap printing is your best bet, especially because it includes multiple colors!

Laser Engraving

If you are printing on aluminum or stainless steel water bottles, laser engraving is probably the best printing technique for you.

Laser engraving utilizes mirrors that focus energy in a concentrated light beam. This beam is controlled by a machine used to engrave the desired design onto the promotional water bottle.

This printing technique gives depth, detail, and texture to an individual water bottle. Also, as this is quite an expensive option, you can expect a print that lasts long. But, you won’t be able to choose many colors with this printing technique.

Full Color Transfer

If your design has many colors, your best promotional water bottle printing technique is full color transfer. It includes an unlimited number of colors and is a great printing method for detailed designs. Still, expect to pay a high price for such a design.

There are several ways of full color transfer on water bottles, the most popular being:

• Offset printing
• Dye sublimation

Offset printing uses four colors. It involves wet ink and a printing plate. Basically, the inked image from a printing plate gets transferred to a rubber cylinder. Then, this is applied to a water bottle.

Dye sublimation utilizes printing onto a transfer paper instead of a screen. This is a heat press technique where the design is put beside the water bottle and heated at high temperatures to transfer the desired design.

As evidenced above, full color transfers are the most expensive but will retain the most detail on your promotional water bottles.

 

As we reach the end of our guide on how to print water bottles on-demand, we hope that you learned something useful. Now, are you ready to print something amazing on your promotional water bottles?