Bleed and safe area explained
What bleed and safe area mean, how much each product needs (3 mm on boards, 50 mm margins on banners), document sizes to use and how to set them up.
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Bleed and safe area are two margins that stop a print looking wrong after it is cut: bleed is extra background that runs past the cut line, and the safe area is the zone inside the cut where your words and logo must stay. On rigid signs and boards that means 3 mm of bleed on every edge and text at least 10 mm inside the trim. Banners, roller banners and a few small items follow different rules, which are all set out below with the exact document sizes to use.
What bleed and safe area actually do #
Printing and cutting are two separate jobs, and a cutting blade can land a fraction of a millimetre either side of the line. If your background colour stops exactly at the finished edge, any small shift leaves a thin white sliver on one side. Bleed fixes that: the colour or photo carries on past the cut, so wherever the blade lands, it lands in colour.
The safe area works the other way. Anything that must not be lost, such as a phone number, a logo or the last letter of a web address, sits well inside the cut. Then the same small shift never clips it, and the design does not look cramped against the edge. Think of bleed as “let the background run out” and the safe area as “keep the important things in”.
Bleed and safe area by product #
The right bleed and safe area depend on how the item is finished. A board is cut from a bigger sheet, a banner is hemmed and punched, and a roller banner disappears into its base at the bottom.
| Product | Bleed | Keep text and logos |
|---|---|---|
| Rigid signs and boards: Foamex boards, Dibond, Correx boards | 3 mm on every edge | At least 10 mm inside the trim |
| Flyers, posters, letterheads and other printed paper | 3 mm on every edge | Well inside the trim; our designer uses at least 3 mm on flyers and 5 mm on letterheads |
| PVC banners and mesh banners with hems and eyelets | Supply at the finished size | At least 50 mm from every edge |
| Roller banners | Supply at the finished size, for example 850 × 2000 mm | Nothing important in the bottom 150 to 200 mm |
| Printed envelopes and rubber stamps | None | Envelopes are printed once they are made up, and a stamp prints in one ink with no background |
The 50 mm banner margin is bigger than it looks necessary, but a hem folds the edge back on itself and eyelets are punched close to it. Text that sits closer than that can end up folded under or punched through. On a roller banner the base and any table in front of it hide the bottom of the graphic, so the phone number belongs higher up. Our guide to roller banner artwork setup covers that in more detail.
Document sizes with 3 mm bleed #
For anything that takes bleed, set the document to the finished size plus 3 mm on each side, which adds 6 mm to both the width and the height. These are the common A sizes and a DL flyer:
| Finished size | Document size with bleed | Safe area on a sign (10 mm in) |
|---|---|---|
| A5 (148 × 210 mm) | 154 × 216 mm | 128 × 190 mm |
| DL (99 × 210 mm) | 105 × 216 mm | 79 × 190 mm |
| A4 (210 × 297 mm) | 216 × 303 mm | 190 × 277 mm |
| A3 (297 × 420 mm) | 303 × 426 mm | 277 × 400 mm |
| A2 (420 × 594 mm) | 426 × 600 mm | 400 × 574 mm |
| A1 (594 × 841 mm) | 600 × 847 mm | 574 × 821 mm |
| A0 (841 × 1189 mm) | 847 × 1195 mm | 821 × 1169 mm |
The A sizes themselves come from the international paper standard ISO 216; our list of A paper sizes in mm has the full series.
How to set up bleed and safe area in your file #
Every design program handles this slightly differently, and menu names change between versions, so treat the steps below as the order of work rather than exact clicks.
- Start at the finished size. Create the document at the size you are ordering, for example A3 (297 × 420 mm). In InDesign, Illustrator and Affinity the new document window also has bleed fields: enter 3 mm on all four sides.
- Add bleed where there is no bleed setting. Word and PowerPoint have no bleed option, so set a custom page size that already includes it, such as 303 × 426 mm for A3. Remember the real edge is now 3 mm in from the page edge all round.
- Run backgrounds out to the bleed edge. Stretch every background colour, photo or pattern that touches an edge right out to the outer bleed line, not just to the trim.
- Draw your safe area guides. Put guides 10 mm inside the trim for a sign (13 mm from the page edge in Word or PowerPoint, because of the added bleed). For a banner, set them 50 mm in.
- Move text and logos inside the guides. Check every line, including small print such as a web address or registration number set as text.
- Avoid thin borders near the edge. A frame a few millimetres from the trim shows the smallest cutting shift as a wider band on one side. Either drop the border or bring it well inside the safe area.
- Export with bleed turned on. When you save the PDF, choose the option to include the document bleed. Our guide to making a print-ready PDF goes through the export settings for common programs.
Common bleed and safe area mistakes #
- Bleed added by stretching the design. Scaling the whole layout up to fill the bleed pushes text outwards too. Extend the background only.
- Bleed on a banner. Banners and roller banners are supplied at the finished size. On a banner the 50 mm margin does the job that bleed does on a board.
- Important text in a roller base. A web address in the bottom 150 mm is often the first thing hidden.
- White edges on purpose. If you want a white border, make it generous and even, and still keep the background inside the bleed white.
Bleed and safe area in our online designer #
If you design online, the designer sets the bleed and safe area for you. The canvas shows a red cut line, a dashed “keep text inside” line and a dotted bleed line, with a small legend at the bottom. Background colours and templates already run into the bleed. If you drag text outside the dashed line, the checks panel warns that it may be trimmed off or lost in the hem, and text that runs past the cut line has to be moved before you can approve. On banners the eyelet positions and on roller banners the part that goes into the base are marked on screen only; they are never printed.
If you upload your own file instead, a person gives it a free file check for resolution, size and bleed before it prints, and tells you if anything needs changing. The full rules are on our artwork guidelines page, and if your photos or logo need checking too, read what dpi you need for printing.
