# Making a beach towel or coastal print with the Beach Town Map preset

> sun-washed coastal palette for seaside towns

This preset is pure vacation: turquoise ocean, sandy land, pale green parks and wetlands, and sun-bleached white streets, tuned for Miami Beach but happy anywhere the water meets the sand. It's designed first for sublimation - towels, totes, and coaster sets - where the big turquoise and sand fields carry the design even when fine details soften.

## What you need

- **Sublimation:** sublimation printer + paper, polyester beach towels or microfiber towels, poly canvas totes, or poly-coated coaster/panel blanks, large-format heat press for towels (or press in sections), heat tape, butcher paper, lint roller
- **UV printing:** flatbed UV printer, white or clear [acrylic](https://yxecreations.com/pages/acrylic-sheets), light wood panels
- **3D printing:** multi-color printer with sand, turquoise, green, and white filaments
- **Laser engraving:** only with recolored roads - see the method section

## Step 1 - Start from the preset



Open [the Beach Town Map preset](/map-designer?preset=beach-town-map). It loads Miami Beach at zoom 13 - wide enough to get a satisfying sweep of coastline, close enough that the white street grid reads as texture. The composition rule for this preset: **the shoreline is the design**, so frame it diagonally or along one third of the canvas, not dead-center horizontal. Search any coastal town - Gulf Coast, Côte d'Azur, Gold Coast - and make sure a good chunk of `water` turquoise stays in frame; an all-land crop wastes the palette.

## Step 2 - Tune the layers



One Solid layer group, **Beach town**:

- `land` - `#F4E2C7` warm sand base.
- `landcoverSand` - `#F7D9A8`, the actual beaches; slightly more golden than the land so the strand line shows. Push it to `#F2CD8E` if your beach isn't reading.
- `landcoverWetland` `#C9E4C5` and `landusePark` `#B9DCB2` - soft greens for mangroves and parks.
- `water` - `#5BC8C4` turquoise, the hero fill.
- Roads: `roadsMotorway` `#FFFFFF` width 4, `roadsPrimary` `#FFFFFF` width 3, `roadsSecondary` `#FFFFFF` width 2, `roadsStreet` `#FFF7EA` width 1.

Two practical notes: the `#FFF7EA` width-1 streets are extremely subtle against `#F4E2C7` and will mostly vanish in sublimation - that's intentional sun-bleach, but set them to `#FFFFFF` and width 1.5 if you want the grid to survive a towel press. And remember white in sublimation means "no ink," so white roads become the color of your blank - perfect on white towels, but on a cream tote they'll print as cream.

## Step 3 - Export



- **Sublimation / UV:** 4096 px PNG, background ON - the sand color is the design, you almost never want it transparent here. The one exception: printing on a sand-colored or natural canvas blank where the fabric can play the land; then toggle **Background off**.
- **3D:** 3MF export.
- **Laser:** per-layer SVG ZIP, and recolor first (see below).
- Enable **small-polygon cleanup** - coastal OSM data is full of sliver wetlands and sandbar fragments.
- For a coaster set, switch export shape to **circle** before exporting; corner/hanger holes generally don't suit soft goods, but **Hanger hole** works if you cut a beach-house ornament from acrylic.

## UV & Sublimation Printing

### UV printing



1. Export the 4096 px PNG with background on.
2. Size in the RIP to your panel; the flat fields and fine white grid hold up at large sizes.
3. On clear acrylic, print a white underbase so the turquoise stays vivid; on white acrylic print direct.
4. Register, print, and consider a matte varnish pass - gloss fights the sun-bleached look.

### Sublimation



1. Print **mirrored** at final size on sublimation paper. For a towel, that may mean tiling a large-format print.
2. Lint-roll the towel, pre-press it for 5–10 seconds to drive out moisture, then tape the print face-down.
3. Press with the settings recommended for your material, paper, and inks (polyester fabric typically runs cooler and shorter than hardboard).
4. Peel hot and pull the paper in one motion to avoid ghosting on the fluffy surface.
5. Expect the width-1 `#FFF7EA` streets to disappear into the weave; the white primaries and turquoise carry the design.

## Laser Cutting & Engraving

### Laser engraving



Honest warning: in grayscale this palette is sand-on-sand - white roads on a light ground engrave to almost nothing. If you want this design lasered, flip the road logic first:

1. In the layer panel, recolor all four road tiers to a dark tone (`#4A3B28`) and darken `water` to `#2E6E6A` so the grayscale separation exists.
2. Export the combined SVG and raster-engrave on light plywood; water and roads now burn visibly while the sand stays raw.
3. Cut the outer shape last.
4. Alternatively, skip raster entirely: engrave just the water fill and the shoreline becomes a beautiful single-tone burn.

## 3D Printing

### 3D printing



1. Export the 3MF with all layers on - sand base, turquoise water, two greens, white roads is a friendly five-color plaque.
2. Merge `landcoverWetland` into `landusePark` (`#B9DCB2`) before export to save a filament slot.
3. Assign filaments - a silk turquoise for water genuinely looks wet.
4. Print at 0.16 mm; the white road ribbons sit raised above the sand like boardwalks.

## Make it yours

- Towns where the palette sings: Key West, Tulum, Santorini coastline, Cape Cod hooks, Australia's Byron Bay.
- Sunset swap: water `#7B6BC9`, sand `#F4C7A1`, keep white roads - instant dusk-beach version.
- Deep-tropic swap: water `#1FA8A0`, parks `#5FA86B` for a lusher, postcard-saturated take.
- Toggle **water inversion** in the export modal for islands so the ocean becomes the cut/printed body - great for acrylic island silhouettes.
- Add a **route layer** in coral `#FF6F61` tracing the boardwalk or your morning beach run.
- Circle export shape + **Hanger hole** = beach-town Christmas ornament from 3 mm white acrylic.
- Press a matching set: towel + tote + four coasters of the same shoreline, one artwork, three blanks.
- Use the **heart** export shape over the resort where you got engaged - same palette, instant keepsake.

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Open the tool: https://www.mylasertools.com/learn/guides/beach-town-map
Read online: https://www.mylasertools.com/learn/guides/beach-town-map