The love for both the best hoodies and sweatshirts is never-ending. For one, there can’t be enough collection of hoodies, there is always one remaining. After all, hoodies are one of the best, most comfortable, go-to wardrobe staples. Whether you wear it for any casual hoodie for meetups, parties, picnics, running errands, or just home wear, the nice hoodie is possibly the only attire that covers all these occasions. Taking about the facts, just in the year 2022, jerseys, hoodies, and sweatshirts only make up a business of 124 billion in the USA. While in 2023 years, these numbers are expected to double because of the tremendous demands and outstanding designs in the market. With tons of options for different types of hoodie material, there are no limits to manufacturing custom, cozy, and good-quality hoodies.
Your Custom hoodies Line Is Your Best Marketing Tool
Being the branding icon, the custom hoodies and sweatshirts are the best attire to share the brand’s art and creative designs and offer customers personalized hoodies per their demands. Whether you are a clothing brand just starting or an established one, this blog will be helpful for both. In this blog, we will mention essential features and factors through which you can make better decisions for your custom hoodie clothing line in the USA.
Zega Apparel a leading custom hoodie manufacturer, we have been manufacturing and guiding startups and established brands to choose the fabric for their clothing projects. The fabric selection process is one critical decision that matters from the initialization of the project till the end life of the finished product.
Lightweight hoodies, 100 cotton hoodies, aesthetic sweatshirts, and polyester hoodies are ideal for every hoodie wearer. Comfortable hoodies are the top priority for everyone. In this blog, we will discuss everything in detail, from the best fabric for hoodies to what features to look for in the material of the hoodie. We have also added pros with each fabric type so that you can make a full-informed decision for your custom hoodie clothing line.
Different Types of Material for a Hoodie Clothing Line
Cotton

There is no surprise why cotton comes to our mind when we say hoodie fabric. After all, cotton is one of the popular options for all types of clothing lines. Lack of cotton is undoubtedly one of the best choices for hoodie manufacturing. You can easily create a soft, comfortable, durable hoodie line tailored to your custom needs. You must mention your custom design to the clothing manufacturer; they do the rest.
Being expensive, it is one of the best options to check the above-mentioned factors. Also, you can choose any custom printing services like, screen printing, digital printing, or embroidery. The cotton fabric for hoodie works best with all designing printing methods.
Pros
- A hypo allergic fabric that suits well over all types of skin.
- Easy to wash, comfortable to wear & easy to care for.
- Allows good air circulation.
- A natural fabric derived from the plant.
- It can be used to manufacture different types of clothing lines.
Fleece fabric

The fleece hoodies are pretty much in demand in the consumer market. The fleece fabric is man-made synthetic that belongs to the polyester category. It’s a fabric typically made of polyester blends, making it one option to wear, as it’s comfortable, durable, and easy for any custom print. The hoodie made of fleece fabric provides a good pockets space with good air ventilation keeping your body cool. The material is nice to feel. Moreover, it is a bit of water resistant.
The fleece fabric hoodie is also considered sustainable, so all manufacturing is ethical and sustainable to prevent damaging environmental effects. The material can easily mound and adjust to any design you want, whether for a fleece hoodie or sweatshirt.
Pros
- It offers an incredible comfortable and warm feel
- A soft, comfortable, and plush fabric.
- An inexpensive clothing fabric, it suits best all outdoor activities in winter as it provides the best body warmness to your body.
- Easy to print an screen printing design, embroidery or digital design or sublimation printing
- Jersey fabric

The jersey fabric hoodie is considered one of the best for manufacturing sports of physical activities clothing lines. The jersey fabric hoodie is a blend of cotton jerseys, and in fact, this fabric brings all the benefits of cotton with it, which means flexibility in choosing the printing method and premium feel.
The jersey fabric hoodie offers a 25% stretch ability, which ensures a perfect fit to your body with some adjustability. You don’t need to worry about your body movement and breathability when choosing the jersey fabric for your hoodie line. Usually, the jersey is used in manufacturing sportswear and activewear clothing line because of the best breathability, comfortable and stretchy structure. With a custom jersey knitwear fabric, you can create light, medium, and heavy-weight hoodies for your clothing brand.
Pros
- Offers a flexible texture along with comfort and softness in touch.
- Provides the best athletic or sportswear fabric
- It’s easy to wash and doesn’t lose its life when repeatedly washing
- A versatile material, you can easily use this fabric for different types of clothing line making
- High durability, multiple colors to adopt.
Sweatshirt knit

As the name says, the sweatshirt knit is a dedicated clothing fabric for manufacturing sweatshirts. Still, many manufacturers and clothing brands use this fabric to create a high-end luxury feel hoodie line. The sweatshirt fabric is easy to care for and comfortable and breathable.
This fabric is also a cotton blend, but you can get it with the polyester blend, which adds a stretchy factor.
Pros
- Accessible available in the industry
- Offers good breathable textures allowing flexible body movements.
- You don’t need to worry about the loss of shape or shrinkage after washing
- A versatile fabric that is primarily used for distinctive sweatshirts with no limits on creativity.
French terry

The French terry fabric hoodie is a unique, new, and popular option in the fashion industry that results in the best premium designs. Whether screen printing, digital design, or embroidery digitizing services, every design looks perfect over the French terry fabric. This is also known as loopback cotton. This French terry fabric is a good option for creating flexible, comfy hoodies and creative sweatshirts.
We must mention that French terry is an expensive blend of cotton. It is more costly than jersey fabric or fleece fabric. One good thing about this fabric is that you quickly find its stretchy versions through professional fabric sources and manufacturers.
Pros
- Durable and capable fabric
- Easy to handle, manufacture and source in the market
- It can easily take any design you print over it
- Offers excellent moist wicking qualities
- Supports all kinds of printing and embroidery methods.
Polyester

Polyester fabric belonging to the synthetic family is considered one of the top-notch fabrics for the hoodie clothing line. If you want a hoodie fabric that holds for the longest time and offers good durability and strength, then polyester is the best fabric you can opt for.
The manufacturer doesn’t use 100% pure polyester as it’s unstable. It is generally mixed with any other fabric to balance the missing features like water absorbent quality.
Add spandex, silk, or Lycra blend to make it a whole fabric line. You must make some adjustments with polyester as your hoodie fabric because it does not offer low breathability. At the same time, other factors like dyeing ability are also not impressive.
Pros
- A wrinkle-resistant fabric.
- Lightweight and heavy on comfort fabric
- Offers mind-blowing vibrant results of colors
- It provides a smooth, silky and luxurious feel when wearing.
Stretchy fabric

Another versatile fabric type is a stretch fabric, a combination of two different types of cloth: nylon and polyester. Being a mixture, the stretchy fabric hoodie is quite robust, durable, and high-quality. One exciting fact about the stretchy fabric is its bugs, stain, and wrinkle-free fabric. You can also easily create a creative polyester sweatshirt using stretchy fabric
Compared with woven material, polyester or stretchy fabric provides a perfect texture that is cozy, comfortable, and easy to wear. Whole woven material is not ideal for all causes. At some point, you might feel a bit of irritation while wearing it. Moreover, you can also use this stretchy fabric with a combination of Lycra fabric or spandex fabric if you want a high-end and top-class texture for your target audience. The stretchy fabric hoodies are primarily made for athletic hoodies and gym wear.
Pros
- Offer massive compositions like spandex, Lycra, polyester, or even blend with cotton or other fabrics.
- Wrinkle resistant fabric
- A fantastic shape recovery structure
- Offers a good fit over the body and open flexibility for body movement.
Wool

Wool is a popular fabric used in industries for decades. It is considered the best fabric for hoodie or sweater making. It has happened in just recent years. It has started losing its significance because of its thick fabric. Otherwise, wool hoodies are the best for making wide-to-thick hoodies.
Wool fibers are considered soft, durable and light fabric, which is one of the best options. But it is not as much comfortable as other fabrics are, and that’s one lack of using wool fabric. Another thing is that you don’t get many customization options for screen printing, sublimation printing services and more with wool fabric. In the fashion industry, wool fabric is combined and used with any other fabric type to cover the lacking of this fabric. Other than that, wool is a good fabric that can help in manufacturing good quality hoodies that offer fitting drapes and durability at the same time.
Pros
- A sustainable fabric that prevents the environmental damage
- Its breathable wool keeps the body excellent and vapor moisturizing quality.
- It comes with antimicrobial properties
- Flame-resistant and suitable ignition threshold properties.
Also Read: How To Choose The Right Printing Methods
Factors to Consider When Choosing a Hoodies Fabric
It’s equally important to consider all the factors when choosing a hoodie fabric. These factors will help you analyze and make a well-informed decision about the material you want for your clothing line.
Breathability
Usually, the hoodies are made of thick fabric so the factor of breathability hoodie is critically essential. No one likes to wear thick material that keeps the body warm and steals away all the coolness. The clothing fabric for your hoodies should be breathable enough to allow air passage, while the fabric should absorb sweat. It should keep the body warm in cold seasons, enabling air passage to ensure breathability in average temperatures.
Durability
For every clothing product, the top factors that matter the most are the fabric’s durability. Consumers already know about durable materials, so they directly seek durable materials such as linen, hemp polyester and more. Similarly, when choosing a fabric line for your hoodie line, you must select a material that offers maximum durability under several conditions. Also, you need to ensure that these fabrics can withstand rigid conditions, and their product quality should remain the same even after tons of washes.
Warmth
The primary use of hoodies and sweatshirts comes in handy in winter, so you must choose a fabric that could create thick hoodies and soft sweatshirts simultaneously. The rule for the hoodie fabric is simple: the larger the GSM, the thicker the material will be, blocking more cool air and keeping the body warm.
Comfort
Another important mistune to achieve is if a hoodie is uncomfortable, customers won’t like to wear it. So it’s important to choose a fabric that results in the production of a comfortable hoodie line. Aim to select a material that doesn’t limit the body movement and provides a complete balance between the comforts, cozy, fitness and body movement.
Your design print
Choosing the hoodie fabric type also depends on the design that needs to print over it. Some of the design looks best over cotton fabric, some linen, and some polyester, and there is a vast list. Before choosing the hoodie fabric, deciding whether you want a custom screen printing transfer, digital printing or embroidery over your hoodie line is essential. Afterward, you can select a hoodie fabric that suits your design type.
Wrapping up
Now that we know what features and quality each fabric offers, the battle comes with the best fabric, cotton or polyester. The cotton hoodie fabric is a natural and sustainable fabric withes a lightweight structure. One thing that comes as an advantage in cotton is that they are comfortable for all time, while polyester fabric might irritate you after a couple of hours. At the same time, the cotton fabric is more expensive than polyester. When it comes to printing, polyester fabric is easy with heat transfer printing and screen printing. On the other side, cotton hoodies are pretty handy with all type of printing methods. That’s all.