T-shirt chest measurements, eight blank styles

The table below holds eight blank styles commonly used for printed t-shirts. Seven are cut unisex. One, the Gildan G500L, is a ladies' cut, and it is the reason this dataset is worth reading rather than skimming.

Chest at S, M, L and XL for all eight styles, in inches, measured flat. Body length is published at Medium and is given in a second table below. Where a value is not held in this release, the cell says so rather than carrying an estimate.

Five of the seven unisex styles publish the identical ladder: 18.0", 20.0", 22.0", 24.0". Two do not. Next Level 3600 runs a full inch wider at S and a half inch wider at M before rejoining that ladder at L and XL. Comfort Colors C4017 sits a half inch above the ladder at every size. Gildan G500L sits below all of them at every size.

Style pages carry the same figures alongside fabric weight and cut notes: Gildan G500, Bella+Canvas 3001C, Next Level 3600, Hanes 5250T, Champion T525C and Comfort Colors C4017.

At Large and at XL, and it is 3.5 inches. The ladies' Gildan G500L publishes 19.0" at L, against 22.0" for most unisex styles in this set and 22.5" for Comfort Colors C4017. At XL the same gap reappears: 21.0" against 24.0" to 24.5". Same letter, three and a half inches of garment.

Medium is nearly as wide a split. G500L publishes 17.5" at M. Most unisex Mediums here publish 20.0", a gap of 2.5 inches, and Next Level 3600 and Comfort Colors C4017 both publish 20.5", a gap of 3.0 inches. The pattern holds at S as well: 16.5" against 18.0" to 19.0".

The reading is not that one brand runs small. It is that the letter names a different garment depending on the cut. A shopper moving between a ladies' cut and a unisex cut is not changing size, they are changing pattern, and the size label hides the change. Vanity sizing covers why letters drift between brands and why a number on a tape is the only stable thing to shop on.

20.5" across the chest, laid flat, half an inch above the 20.0" Gildan G500 publishes at Medium. The 22.0" number that gets attached to this style is a size Large figure from the common unisex ladder, and it is not the C4017's own Large either: that publishes 22.5".

What the published specs actually show at Medium: C4017 is 20.5", Gildan G500 is 20.0", and the total spread across every unisex Medium in this set is half an inch, from 20.0" to 20.5". At Medium these styles sit close enough that tolerance covers the difference between them. The split worth acting on is the cut, not the brand.

Body length at Medium is 29.0" on every unisex style here except one, so it is reported once rather than one figure per style. Comfort Colors C4017 is the outlier at 29.5", which is worth pausing on: it sits half an inch above the common ladder on the chest at Medium and half an inch above the other unisex styles on length. It is a slightly bigger shirt, not a differently shaped one.

Body lengths at S, L and XL are not held in this release. Interpolating them from the Medium figure would be a guess, so they are left out.

A published spec is a target, not a promise about the shirt in the box. Manufacturing tolerance on specs of this kind runs roughly plus or minus 0.3" to plus or minus 0.8". Comfort Colors C4017 is garment dyed, and garment dyeing shrinks and distorts the finished piece, so it carries the wider end of that band at about plus or minus 0.8".

The measuring method matters more than the tape. Pit to pit measurement defines where the chest reading is taken, and how to measure a shirt covers the rest of the points. If you want the letter-to-inch view instead, the t-shirt size chart is built on the same figures.

Two dates are given on purpose. The retrieval date, 27 July 2026, is when the brand specifications were read. The modification date, 24 August 2026, is when this page was last revised. The methodology page sets out how figures are transcribed and what is done when a brand and a tape disagree. If you are checking a figure for anything that matters, go to the brand's own current specification sheet as well: brands revise specs, and a spec read in July 2026 can be superseded without notice.

It does not tell you your body measurements. Every number here describes a garment lying flat. It does not cover sizes below S or above XL, which are published by these brands but are not held in this release. It does not cover sleeve length, shoulder width, sleeve opening or hem width. It does not cover any style outside the eight listed. And it does not describe the individual shirt you own, which is where tolerance and wash shrinkage take over.

It also is not a substitute for measuring. A published spec tells you what the factory aimed at. A tape tells you what arrived.