design tool
Bleed calculator
Enter the finished size of a print job and the bleed your printer asks for, and get the document size with bleed, the safe area for text, and the pixel size at your DPI, with a drawing that labels each line. With the common 3 mm bleed an A4 page becomes a 216 by 303 mm document.
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- Runs on your device, nothing is uploaded
- Free, no sign in
- No watermark, no file limit
How it works
- 1
Pick the finished size
Choose a paper size, a business card or Custom size in mm, then Portrait or Landscape. This is the size after trimming.
- 2
Enter the bleed and safe margin
Type the bleed on each edge, or press 3 mm, 1/8 inch or 5 mm. Set the safe margin your printer asks for; 5 mm is a cautious default.
- 3
Read the sizes and the drawing
The cards give the document size with bleed, its pixels at your DPI, the trim and the safe area. The drawing labels the bleed in pink, the trim as a solid line and the safe area dashed.
- 4
Fix a file without bleed
The panel underneath gives the scale that makes a finished size file cover the bleed and how much the trim then cuts away. Copy the sizes takes everything as text.
Bleed, trim and safe area
Printers print on a larger sheet and cut it down, and the blade can wander by a millimetre or two. The trim is the line where the finished piece is meant to be cut. Bleed is artwork that runs past the trim, so that if the cut lands a little outside the line there is colour there rather than a white sliver. The safe area is the zone inside the trim where text, logos and phone numbers belong, far enough in that a cut a little inside the line never touches them. A document with bleed is therefore the trim size plus twice the bleed in each direction, and the safe area is the trim size minus twice the safe margin.
How much bleed to add
Three millimetres on each edge is the figure most printers in Australia, the UK and Europe ask for, and 1/8 inch, 3.175 mm, is the North American equivalent. Some ask for 5 mm, particularly on thick card or booklets, and large format work can need more. Bleed is added to every edge, not split, so 3 mm turns A4's 210 by 297 into 216 by 303. Only artwork that touches the edge needs to extend into it: a background colour or a photo that runs off the page. A design with a white border all round needs no bleed at all.
Adding bleed to a flyer export
The flyer builder exports at the finished size with no bleed, no crop marks and no CMYK conversion: an A4 flyer comes out as 2480 by 3508 pixels, A4 at 300 DPI, in RGB. To print it edge to edge, you or the printer can scale the artwork up until it covers the bleed. With 3 mm on A4 that is about 2.9 percent, after which the trim takes about 3 mm off each side and 4.2 mm off the top and bottom. The panel under the drawing works this out for any size, and tells you how far in to keep anything important before scaling. The alternative is to leave a white margin in the design and print without bleed.
Pixels for a document with bleed
When a printer asks for a 300 DPI file with bleed, the pixel size is the document size with bleed, not the trim size, multiplied out. For A4 with 3 mm that is 2551 by 3579 pixels rather than 2480 by 3508. The DPI box changes the figure for other resolutions, such as 150 for a large poster read from a distance.
Limits worth knowing
Every number here is arithmetic on the sizes you enter; the printer's template, if they send one, overrides it. Some printers count the safe margin from the trim and some from the bleed edge, so the tool shows both figures. Nothing is uploaded and nothing is stored, ever.
Limits
- 3 mm is the common bleed, and 1/8 inch in North America, but the printer's own spec wins.
- The drawing is to scale except where a band would be too thin to see, which the caption says.
- Bleed runs from 0 to 25 mm here; large format banners that need more should follow the printer's template.
What it does not do
- It does not add bleed to a file. It gives the sizes, and the scale needed when the artwork has none.
- It does not draw crop marks or produce a PDF.
- It does not check colour mode; print work in CMYK is a separate step with the printer.
Questions people ask
Do I need bleed if I print at home?
Usually not. Most home and office printers cannot print to the edge of the paper and leave a margin of 3 to 6 mm, so bleed would simply be cut off by the printer's own limits. Design with a white border instead. Bleed matters when a print shop trims a larger sheet down to your finished size.
What happens if I send a file without bleed?
One of three things. The printer may reject it and ask for a new file, scale it up slightly so it covers the bleed, which crops the edges, or print it with a thin white edge where the cut drifts. Ask which they will do before ordering, especially for business cards, where a few millimetres is a large share of the card.
What bleed does a business card need?
The same 3 mm on each edge, or 1/8 inch in North America, so an 85 by 55 mm card becomes a 91 by 61 mm document. Because a card is so small, keep text at least 4 to 5 mm inside the trim. Choose Business card in the size list to see the drawing and both figures.
Should the bleed be included in the PDF page size?
Yes, when the printer asks for bleed. The page should be the size with bleed, such as 216 by 303 mm for A4 with 3 mm, and many printers also want crop marks in the area outside it. Design tools set this through a bleed setting that enlarges the page and marks the trim box.
Does this tool upload my design?
No design is involved. You type sizes and the page works out the rest with arithmetic in your browser. No network request is made after loading and nothing is stored, ever, so there is nothing to delete when you are done.
Make the flyer, then scale it to bleed
Take what you made here into flyers.
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Background reading: the question page on this.
Written and checked by the OneCraft team. Last checked .