Gildan size chart

How to read a Gildan size chart

Gildan measures its garments laid flat. Chest width is straight across the body, so the chest all the way around is twice that number: a 20 inch width is a 40 inch garment chest. Body length runs from the high point of the shoulder, where the shoulder seam meets the collar, down to the hem. The sleeve on Gildan's charts is measured from the center back of the neck to the end of the sleeve, so it includes half the shoulder and reads longer than a sleeve measured from the seam.

The surest way to choose is to measure a shirt that already fits the way you like, laid flat, and find the size with the closest chest width. The box under the chart does that for you.

Gildan 5000, 64000 or 2000?

These are the three Gildan tees you meet most in print-on-demand catalogues. Size for size, Gildan gives them the same chest width and body length. The difference is the fabric and the cut:

The 5000 Heavy Cotton is the classic, sturdy tee. The 64000 Softstyle is lighter and softer, cut as what Gildan calls a modern classic fit, and it is the only one of the three with an XS. The 2000 Ultra Cotton is the heaviest of the three at 6 oz. If buyers ask whether a shirt runs small, the honest answer from these charts is that the three run alike in width and length; the 64000 simply feels thinner.

Gildan youth sizes by age

Gildan's youth styles go from XS to XL. S&S Activewear, one of Gildan's distributors, gives the age each letter usually fits, and the width depends on the style:

The Softstyle 64000B runs a size small next to the 5000B: its XS is 14 inches across where the Heavy Cotton youth XS is 16. If a parent orders by age, the 5000B is the safer default.

The Heavy Blend 18000 and 18500

The 18000 crewneck sweatshirt and the 18500 hooded sweatshirt share one chart in Gildan's pages, XS to 5XL, and so do the youth 18000B and 18500B. Gildan now lists the adult Heavy Blend as 60% polyester and 40% cotton, while the youth pair stays 50/50. A medium is 22 inches across and 28 long: two inches wider than a medium 5000 tee, which is the room a sweatshirt needs to go over one.

Putting the chart in your listing

On Etsy the description is plain text, so a chart has to be lines, not a table: Copy for Etsy gives one line per size with the chest and the length in the unit you picked. Most sellers also add the chart as one of the listing photos, which Download image makes for you as a plain white PNG without a logo. On Shopify, paste the HTML table into the product description's HTML view. Use the measurements of the exact blank your supplier prints on: a Printful or Printify product page names the style, such as Gildan 64000, and a different blank means a different chart.

A size chart answers the buyer's question. Which design to print is the seller's, and it decides whether the shirt sells at all. Trendlytic, the research tool we build, reads Etsy, Redbubble, TeePublic and Amazon Merch in one search and shows which designs are Rising and how crowded each niche is. Plans start at $19.99 a month after a 3-day trial. To size the print itself, the DTF size chart gives the transfer width for every shirt size, and the free mockup generator puts the design on a t-shirt photo for the listing.

Measurements from each style's page on gildan.com, read in October 2026and checked against S&S Activewear. Gildan publishes inches and gives no tolerance; centimetres are converted.