The 5 Most Popular T-Shirt Colors Are….

Being in the t-shirt, business we get asked this question all the time.  What are the most popular t-shirt colors?  Not only is it important for our customers to know the answer,but it’s important to us from a sourcing side as well.  We would be in real trouble if we had a warehouse full of Teal t-shirts!  Not that we don’t like teal, it just that it’s not one of the best selling colors out there.

So……(drum roll) the top 5 selling colors are White, Black, Navy, Grey, and Red.  Royal Blue is not far behind red.  I bet this list is not surprising right?  In fact, White and Black are sooo far ahead of the other colors its not even funny.  Many of the top t-shirt mills  have production lines solely dedicated to running blank white t-shirts and blank black t-shirts all the time.  It may sound boring that black and white are the best but its been this way for a long long time.  So the next question is why do t-shirts brands even bother making 30 different colors?  For one, there is a market for these other colors, its just not that big.  Think about your favorite football team or college, they have a specific color right?  Also, its important to have a wide variety of colors to choose from.  Can you imagine a company like Gildan coming out with a catalog that only featured two shirts?  That would be boring.  But the truth is these two colors make up the lion’s share of their total business.

So now you have the answer.  As we sit in 2012, the t-shirt trade is all about wholesale white t-shirts and wholesale black t-shirts.  I wonder if we will be saying the same thing in 2022?