The Best Things to Print on a Custom Dog Bandana

A custom bandana is one of those gifts that sounds like a fun idea and then leaves people staring at a blank text field, wondering what should actually go on it. The wrong thing makes the bandana ugly forever. The right thing makes the dog's photo album. Below is a working list of what we've seen people order, what tends to work, and what to avoid.

The categories that work

The dog's name in a single clean line. The most ordered thing, and it works because it's restrained. "BENJI" in small caps on a small bandana looks better than a long sentimental phrase. If the name has more than seven letters, smaller type. If it has fewer, you can go larger.

A very short adjective + the name. "Good Boy Benji." "Wise Old Rumi." "The Honourable Lady Maggie." Two or three words maximum. If you're tempted to add a fourth, don't.

A street name or city. "Indiranagar dog." "Bandra resident." "From the Khasi hills." Works particularly well if the dog moves between cities or has been adopted from a specific shelter or region.

The adoption year. "Adopted Spring 2023." The kind of detail people stop to read at the park. A small ceremony in cloth.

A small graphic, simple. A line-drawing of a paw, a moon, a small flower, the city's outline, a heart. The simpler, the better it prints. We'll send a digital proof regardless, so you can see how it'll look before we commit to it.

A phrase the dog "says". "I came for the snacks." "Walk in five minutes." "Please don't pet the photographer." Mild, slightly dry. A dog has no inner monologue, so the joke is on the human reading it. Keep it gentle.

The categories that don't

Long inspirational quotes. They don't fit. The print becomes a wall of small text that nobody can read across a park.

Inside jokes that need explaining. If the bandana requires a footnote, it isn't working. The bandana is a small public-facing object — keep the meaning available to a stranger at a glance.

Birth dates. Almost no one knows the dog's exact date of birth, especially for adopted dogs. A year works; a date is fiddly and feels somehow formal in a way that dogs aren't.

The owner's phone number. Tempting as a safety thing, but bandanas come off. A collar tag is the right place for the phone number; a bandana is the place for the personality.

Multiple lines of different fonts. Pick one font, one weight, one line. Two if the design genuinely warrants. More than that and it stops looking like a bandana and starts looking like a poorly designed business card.

Anything written in Comic Sans. We will gently suggest an alternative.

How the proof process works

You order the Custom Print Bandana like any other product. Within a day or two of checkout, we email you to ask for the artwork — text, image, or both. We respond with a digital proof showing exactly how the print will sit on the bandana, at what size, in what colour. You approve, we print, we ship. The full turnaround from approved proof is 7–10 working days.

If you have a specific font in mind, send a reference. If you have a drawing or an image, send the original — we'll convert it into a print-ready file at our end. We can match most common fonts and clean up most line drawings.

One small note on text size

A printed bandana isn't a billboard. The visible area on a folded triangular bandana is roughly 12cm wide on the M/L size, 9cm on the S/M. Text fills that nicely at 6–10 characters per line. More than that and you're working against the format.

The simplest test, if you're unsure: write your phrase out on a piece of paper at the size you'd like it printed. Hold it at arm's length. If you can read it cleanly, the bandana will look right. If you have to squint, the bandana will look busy.

What to do if you change your mind

Once a custom bandana is printed, we can't restock it. But if the artwork didn't come out matching the approved proof — a wrong colour, a misaligned print — we'll reprint or refund at no charge.

If you change your mind about the size after delivery, email us within seven days and we'll reprint the same artwork on the other size for the cost difference only, no design fee.

For sizing guidance on the bandana itself, the full note is here.