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GlossaryPrinting your card

What Is Bleed in Printing?

Bleed is the extra artwork that runs past the edge where a printed card will be cut, so that a blade landing slightly off the line still finds ink and not bare paper. It is usually 3 mm on every side, which makes a card with an 85.6 by 54 mm finished size a 91.6 by 60 mm file.

Why Cards Need It

Cards are not printed one at a time. They are printed many to a large sheet and cut apart, and no cutter is perfectly exact. If the artwork stops exactly at the cut line, a cut that lands a fraction of a millimetre inside leaves a thin white sliver along one edge. Bleed removes the problem by printing the colour or image beyond the line, so any small drift trims away extra ink instead of exposing paper.

How Much to Add

Three millimetres on every side is the common request for business cards, although some printers ask for 2 mm or 5 mm, so check theirs. A card that finishes at 85.6 by 54 mm therefore needs artwork 91.6 by 60 mm. The bleed area is trimmed off and never seen by the person holding the card, so nothing important should sit in it: it exists only to be cut away.

Bleed Is Not the Safe Zone

Bleed extends outwards past the cut line. The safe zone is the opposite, a margin inside the cut line that text and logos should stay clear of. A design needs both: background that runs out into the bleed, and anything that must survive trimming held back from the edge.

What Happens Without It

A card with no bleed can still be printed, but the printer either rejects the file, scales it up to create bleed and shifts your layout, or prints it as supplied and accepts that edges may show white. None of those is what you want from a batch of five hundred cards, which is why bleed is checked before anything else.

Frequently asked questions

How much bleed does a business card need?

Usually 3 mm on every side. Printers differ, so confirm with yours, but 3 mm is the most common requirement for business cards.

Does the bleed show on the finished card?

No. The bleed area is cut off. It exists only so that the edge of the finished card is covered in ink even if the cut is slightly off.

Can I just stretch my design to add bleed?

Not safely. Stretching changes the proportions and moves your text. Extend the background past the edge instead, and keep text and logos inside the safe zone.

Keep reading

Related terms

Crop MarksCrop marks, also called trim marks, are short printed lines at the corners of a design that show a printer where to cut. They sit outside the finished card area and are removed when the card is trimmed.Safe ZoneThe safe zone is the margin inside the cut line of a printed card where text and logos must stay clear, because cutting is never perfectly exact. It is the opposite of bleed: bleed runs outwards past the cut, while the safe zone holds important content back from it. A margin of 3 to 5 mm is typical.Business Card DimensionsBusiness card dimensions vary by country: 3.5 by 2 inches (88.9 by 50.8 mm) in the United States and Canada, and about 85 by 55 mm across most of Europe. The international ID-1 size, 85.6 by 54 mm, is the same as a bank card and is the size used for the print file here.Print-Ready PDFA print-ready PDF is a file prepared so a printer can use it without changes: the right finished size, bleed on every side, text and images that will print cleanly, and page boxes that record where the cut falls. It is a PDF built for a press rather than for viewing on screen.

Put this into practice with your own card

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