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What are the most popular t-shirt colors

popular t-shirt colors

Do you need to create a t-shirt collection and don’t know what colors customers are looking for? Or do you want to order t-shirts, and want to know which colors sells the most?

I will give you the answer. And I’ll also tell you how many different colors you need.

But first, you need to understand that top-selling colors depend on fashion trends. Sometimes red is fashionable, sometimes it’s gray, or any other color.

But fortunately, there are several colors that are always on top of the best-selling, regardless of fashion trends.

In our stores, we sell thousands of t-shirts a month, and our audience is essentially tourists, which means they are customers from all over the world, so sales reflect the general tastes. Therefore, our top sales by color certainly represent the world average.

So here are the most sold colors, in this order:

  1. Navy blue
  2. Black
  3. Heather gray

And these three colors represent about 2/3 of all sales. So, with only these three colors, you can satisfy 66% of your customers needs.

But there’s a problem.

A collection with only 3 colors is not appealing. And on top of that, these are dull colors. Imagine going to a t-shirt store (or website), and finding only three colors. Boring, isn’t it?

It would be almost like Henry Ford’s famous quote, saying that “the customer could choose the color of the car as long as the color was black”, because Ford, at that time, only made black cars.

Popular t-shirt colors- navy black and gray
Popular t-shirt colors- navy black and gray

So you need more colors, and these are the ones I advise (in this order):

  1. white
  2. royal blue
  3. green
  4. red
  5. bordeaux

The more colors you add to the collection, the more chances you’ll have to please a significant number of customers.

Also, the store will be far more appealing.

It’s easier to display t-shirts if you have lots of colors. A shelf with varied and matching colors, is extremely attractive and makes the customer want to buy more than one t-shirt.

In an online store, a list with lots of cheerful colors, is also extremely appealing.

Popular t-shirt colors- multiple colors
Popular t-shirt colors- multiple colors

Yes it’s true. Some colors will have few sales. But if you don’t have these colors, overall sales will be lower. And this is what many people find difficult to understand:

Your collection must have t-shirts colors that will sell just a few units, or even nothing. But it’s these colors that will help sell the others.

But the problem is that the more colors you have, the more money you’ll have to invest in inventory. And the chances of having colors that don’t sell is bigger.

And then there’s the question: What color t-shirt is right for each design?

Quite often we have designs that when printed on a navy blue t-shirt, or black t-shirt, sales are high. But then, when we print these same designs on a green t-shirt (for example), sales are low. When we choose to print a design on a less popular color, we may be condemning this design to have few sales.

That’s why we, in our store, use transfers in almost all of our t-shirts.

That is the basis of our success. It’s this secret that allowed us to sell more than 500,000 t-shirts.

Using screen printed heat transfers, we solve two problems that most of t-shirt businesses have:

  • We can have a lot of different colors, because we don’t need to print a lot of units of each color (in fact we can print only one t-shirt)
  • The customer can choose to change the t-shirt color if they like a design, but not the color.

Another factor you have to take into account is this: The colors that customers want also depend on the season of the year.

In winter they don’t want light colors, but in summer they also like some light colors, such as white, beige, and light blue.

My advice: adapt your offer to the season.

In winter, you can remove white t-shirts, and other light colors, from your collection. This way, your collection will look like a winter collection. But in the summer, add these light colors. Your collection will instantaneously look like a summer collection.

popular t-shirt colors- winter vs summer colors
Popular t-shirt colors- winter vs summer colors