SVG or PNG for Selling Patterns?
Guide · Updated 20 September 2026
In short: sell a PNG at a stated dpi. It is what print-on-demand services take, and it carries the texture and the effects that make the design look like cloth. Add an SVG when the buyer needs to recolour or rescale the artwork, or when a manufacturer asks for one — but know that a vector file of a textile is the flat, unshaded version of your design, not the picture you approved.
What each format actually carries
The usual advice — "vector scales infinitely, so vector is better" — is written for logos. For a textile print it misses the point, because the two formats do not hold the same design.
| PNG | SVG | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | A grid of pixels at one size | Shapes with coordinates, drawn at any size |
| Your texture and effects | Kept — this is the rendering | Lost. Flat, unshaded colour only |
| Recolouring later | Repaint every pixel | Change the fill and it is done |
| Print-on-demand upload | What they ask for | Usually not accepted |
| Fails when | Asked for more pixels than a browser can encode | The pattern has too many shapes |
That second row is the one that decides most cases. A woven cloth rendered with real yarn — the fibre, the twist, the slub, the sheen where the light catches a ridge — is a picture. There is no path in it. Our vector export is honest about this: it writes the flat, unshaded cloth, pixel-for-pixel what the engine draws with realism turned off. Beautiful, useful, and not what the buyer saw in your listing photograph.
Where the vector really wins
Three cases, and they are worth knowing because in each one the PNG is the wrong answer:
- The buyer wants their own colours. A vector repeat carries its colours as fills, so a client can put the design in their own palette without coming back to you.
- It has to be big and stay crisp. A shop front, a wall, a vehicle wrap — anything where a raster file would need an absurd pixel count.
- A manufacturer or a plotter asks for one. And their first question will be how big is it. This is a real trap: a vector file sized in pixels opens at whatever the program takes its user units to be worth — at 96 dpi, a 1536-unit file becomes 40 cm of a cloth that is actually 6.3 cm across. Ours is written in millimetres of cloth so it opens at the size it will be woven.
Both formats have a ceiling
Neither one is unlimited, and the limits arrive from different directions.
PNG runs out of pixels. A browser will not encode past about 8192 px on a side, which sounds enormous until you do the sum: a 30 cm repeat at 600 dpi is 7087 px, and a 40 cm one is 9449 px — refused. Ours says so before you spend the export rather than after. Our DPI guide has the arithmetic, and the pixel sizes page works it out per product.
SVG runs out of shapes. Every crossing of a woven cloth is a rectangle in the file, so a dense sett becomes an enormous document. We cap it at 250,000 crossings and refuse above that, on the grounds that a 40 MB vector file is no longer an advantage over a PNG — it is a slower way to get the same picture. If you hit that ceiling, either export the PNG or pad the sett so the tile is smaller.
Which of our engines gives what
Worth being exact, because "we export vector" is the kind of claim that wastes a subscription if it is not qualified:
- Sett (woven) — a true vector repeat of the cloth, one user unit per thread, sized in millimetres, wrapped as a pattern fill.
- Watercolour and Pen — the SVG is the woven cloth, and the app says so on the button. A painted wash and a pencil line are drawn through a canvas; there is no path to hand over. For these, the PNG is the deliverable.
- Floral — a true vector of the scene: the motif geometry once, placed by reference, wrapped at the edges, with its own pattern fill and a real centimetre size.
- GeoPrint — export the PNG. The vector row does not currently give you a vector of the geometric print, and we would rather say so here than let you find out after downloading. It is on our list.
So what do you put in the listing?
- A PNG at a stated dpi, named with its size. This is the product.
- An SVG as well, if your buyer is a designer rather than a home sewist — price it as the higher tier, because it is the file that lets them recolour.
- Say the repeat in centimetres in the description either way. It is the question every buyer and every printer asks first.
One thing to check before you upload: a PNG carries no notion of physical size unless something writes it in. A browser's encoder does not, so a 3000-pixel tile opens in Photoshop as 72 dpi and a metre wide. Ours writes the real dpi into the file, which is why it opens at the size you asked for.
Vector, spec sheets, swatch files and print resolution are production output and sit on the paid plans; PNG at screen resolution is free and unlimited. The pricing page has the table.
Try it live: export the same design as a PNG at 72, 150, 300 or 600 dpi and as a vector repeat, and see what each one holds — the file is named with its real size and opens at it.
Choose what to create →Frequently asked questions
Should I sell my pattern as SVG or PNG?
PNG, at a stated dpi, for almost every buyer and for every print-on-demand service. Offer the SVG in addition when the buyer is a designer who needs to recolour or rescale the artwork.
Why does my SVG look flatter than the preview?
Because it is. A vector file holds shapes and fills, so the yarn texture, the sheen and any effects — which are all rendering, not geometry — cannot travel in it. The vector is the flat version of the same design.
Is SVG better because it scales infinitely?
For a logo, yes. For a textile print, scaling is not the problem you have: the repeat has a physical size in centimetres, and what you need is enough resolution at that size. A 300 dpi PNG of a 24 cm repeat is a finished product; a vector of it is a different, flatter product.
How large can a PNG be?
A browser stops encoding somewhere around 8192 px on a side. A 30 cm repeat at 600 dpi is 7087 px and fits; 40 cm at 600 dpi is 9449 px and does not. Drop to 300 dpi or use a smaller repeat.
Can a vector file be too big?
Yes, and for a woven design it happens sooner than you would think, because every thread crossing is its own rectangle. Past a quarter of a million crossings we refuse the export rather than hand over a document that is slower to open than the picture it replaces.