Business Cards for Print: A UK Guide to Specs and Paper

The standard UK business card is 85 × 55 mm, but the file you send should be 91 × 61 mm with a 3 mm bleed on every edge, and critical content should sit 3–4 mm inside the trim.

You've finished the design, the contact details are correct, and the screen preview looks sharp. Before you pay for printing, you still need to answer the questions a preview can't settle: will the cutter expose a white edge, will the paper make the text harder to read, and can someone find your phone number without studying the card?

Treat business cards for print as a physical test, not a finished screen design. A useful card survives trimming, feels appropriate in the hand and makes the next action obvious.

Set Up the Print File Step by Step

Say a sole trader exports artwork at the finished size and receives cards with a white sliver along an edge. The design hasn't necessarily been cut badly. The background may have stopped exactly where the blade was expected to land, leaving no tolerance for movement.

The CMYK Printing business-card specification gives the standard finished size as 85 × 55 mm, with 91 × 61 mm artwork when a 3 mm bleed is required on every edge. For a square card, the equivalent calculation is 55 × 55 mm finished and 61 × 61 mm including bleed.

UK business card dimensions and file settings

The production settings above follow the Design Stack business-card workflow, including its approximately 3–4 mm safe area, 300 dpi raster images and PDF/X-1a:2001 export recommendation where supported.

Build the artwork in production order

1. Create the document. Set the overall artwork to 91 × 61 mm, with guides showing the finished trim and safe area. In Adobe InDesign or Illustrator, you can instead set the page to the finished size and add bleed in document settings. Don't add bleed twice.

2. Extend backgrounds into the bleed. Carry photographs, gradients and solid fills beyond the cut line to the artwork boundary. Even a 1 mm gap can show as white after trimming. Stretch the background, not the entire finished design.

3. Place essential content safely. Keep the name, role, phone, email, logo and QR code inside the safe guides. A decorative shape can cross the trim; a digit in a phone number cannot.

4. Convert colour to CMYK. RGB artwork is a common cause of unexpected colour shifts. Use the printer's requested colour profile, and ask for its rich-black specification rather than building an arbitrary heavy ink mix. Small black text usually needs a simpler black build than a large dark panel.

5. Check images at final size. Raster artwork needs 300 dpi at the size it will print. Enlarging a small downloaded logo won't restore missing detail. Use vector artwork for logos wherever possible.

6. Embed or outline fonts. Embed fonts when licensing permits, or outline them in a duplicate production file. Keep an editable original because outlined contact details are awkward to revise.

7. Run a preflight. Inspect dimensions, bleed, overprint, transparency and CMYK separations. In Acrobat Pro, use Output Preview to inspect separations and overprint. Check fine reversed lettering and scan the QR code from a final-size print.

8. Export and proof. Use PDF/X-1a:2001 where the printer supports it. Order a physical proof and inspect it under neutral light, because paper, ink coverage and trimming aren't visible accurately on a glowing display.

Before exporting: Measure the artwork boundary and move essential content in the outer 3 mm inward. Bleed is disposable artwork, not usable space.

The same production discipline applies to leaflet printing, but each product needs its own template. Don't resize a card PDF to make another item.

Choosing Paper Stock and Finish for Your Cards

Catalogue stocks and finishes compared

Stock choice is a physical test before it is a design decision. The key question is what happens to the card after the handshake: does it get written on, kept in a wallet, or dropped in the recycling within the hour.

Recycled uncoated earns its place when someone needs to write on the card, whether that is an appointment time, a loyalty stamp or a short personal note. Silk suits a clean corporate layout where you want a smooth sheet with no film over it. Lamination is the genuine fork: a matt film protects an everyday networking card without adding reflection, while gloss makes photographs and saturated colour punch harder at the cost of fingerprints and glare under office lighting. Soft touch reads as restrained luxury, though marks show on dark, flat colours.

I treat Triplex as a structural decision rather than a finish. The rigid layered build and coloured core make a firm first impression, but the thickness will not slide into every holder or wallet slot, so confirm the exact construction with your printer before committing to a run.

Whichever stock you shortlist, test it the way a recipient will. Write on a printed sample with a fine-liner after it has spent a day inside a card holder, and check whether the ink dries clean or smears across the surface. Slide it into the holder you carry day to day. If it bends, scuffs or refuses to fit, the specification on screen has already misled you.

Judge the surface as well as the weight

Gsm measures mass per area, not stiffness on its own. Fibre, construction and finish all change how a card bends, so handle printed samples rather than choosing from the weight column alone. To get the terminology straight first, compare cardstock paper weights, then judge the sheets your printer actually supplies.

The Uncoated Business Cards | Recycled, Kraft & Textured | The Print Warehouse range spans writable, stampable kraft, natural, textured and recycled options. That matters for appointment cards, loyalty schemes and handwritten follow-ups, where a coated surface fights the pen.

Choose paper for what the recipient will do with the card: keep it, write on it or recycle it.

If the card is part of a wider campaign, order it alongside a postcard print run and compare the samples together. The same artwork can look markedly different on coated and absorbent surfaces.

Sustainability takes more than a recycled label. Antalis's paper environmental guidance weighs fibre origin and manufacturing processes, and coatings, ink coverage, transport and durability all count alongside them. Lamination makes fibre recovery harder, while UK government waste statistics set expectations for paper and card to be collected separately where technically, environmentally and economically practicable. A durable card that a recipient keeps often beats a nominally greener card reprinted every time details change, so match the stock and the quantity to how long the information will stay useful.

Readability and Accessibility Checks Before Approval

Start with the minimum useful information: name, role, a primary phone number, email address and a clear call to action. Add the business identity, but don't turn the reverse into a directory of every service and social account. Editing is usually a better fix than shrinking everything.

The Government Communication Service accessibility standards recommend clear sans-serif type, avoiding light weights, italics and underlining, left alignment and strong contrast; treat the guidance's 12-point benchmark as a risk check rather than an automatic minimum for every business card.

Make each design decision support reading

• Typeface and hierarchy. Use a readable sans-serif, with a clear distinction between the person's name, role and contact details. Avoid narrow lettering that makes similar characters difficult to distinguish.
• Background and contrast. Put dark text on light stock or white text on a solid dark panel. Remove photography behind contact details, especially where highlights cross the lettering.
• Colour and meaning. Label icons and add words beside colour-coded information. Red/green or blue/yellow distinctions shouldn't be the only way to identify different contact routes.
• Space and audience. Enlarge or simplify text when recipients may have visual impairments or low literacy. Use the reverse for secondary information rather than compressing the contact block.

For event-related digital hand-offs, Wedding Studio's QR codes offer a useful comparison when deciding what information belongs online rather than on the card. Keep printed contact details available so scanning isn't compulsory. Carry that same hierarchy into related stationery printing.

Print the smallest lettering at actual size, then hand the card to a colleague who hasn't seen the design. Time how quickly they find the name, phone number and email without rotating it or asking what an icon means. If they hesitate, revise the hierarchy before approving the order.

Common Print Faults and How to Fix Them

A white edge is usually a file problem before it's a cutting problem. Most clipping, dull colour and soft logos trace back to the bleed, safe-area and resolution settings covered in the file setup steps, so rerun those checks before asking the printer to resubmit. Reprinting the same PDF reproduces the same fault. The table below covers the faults file setup won't catch.

Print faults, causes and fixes

Reversed text fails in a specific way. Strokes that look crisp on screen fill in as ink settles into uncoated or textured fibres, and a busy photograph under the lettering makes it worse. If the card needs white lettering, give it a flat dark panel and keep the type weight heavy enough to survive that spread.

Test where the QR code takes people

Run a physical test before approving. Print the proof at final size, hold it at arm's length and scan it with each phone's default camera, using three different devices held by someone who hasn't handled the design. A code that only scans under ideal light or at close range will fail in a recipient's hands.

A code that scans can still lead nowhere useful. Follow the link on each phone and check that the page loads promptly, supports screen readers and presents an obvious contact or save-details action. Choose a destination you control, ideally a mobile-friendly profile or accessible contact page. Assign someone responsibility for keeping it live while the cards circulate, and avoid making access depend on an expiring campaign page.

Contrast, legibility and ease of use get the same scrutiny on payment cards, and the priorities transfer directly. If a recipient can't read the card or reach the destination in a few seconds, the card goes in the recycling rather than the wallet.

Production judgement: The cheapest place to find a fault is a proof, not a box of unusable cards.

Apply the same destination check to printed flyers. A larger code doesn't rescue an inaccessible page or a dead address.

Confirm the Proof and Place Your Order

A proof arrives with last year's phone number set in clean type and correct colours. Nothing looks wrong, which is exactly when wrong details get approved. Check every line of contact information against the current details before anything else.

Where the deadline allows, approve from a physical proof: stock weight, finish and printed colour only exist on paper. If you can only approve a digital proof, limit what you sign off on screen to content and positioning, and treat the paper and colour as unconfirmed until a sample card arrives.

Before signing off in writing, check trim, safe area and front-to-back orientation, and give the QR code one final scan on the printed piece. Record the filename and version you approved so an older attachment cannot reach production by accident.

Ordering options, quantities and turnaround

Confirm the ordering route and the current production schedule before paying. Dispatch and delivery run on separate clocks, and a revised proof can move the dispatch date.

Approve the job, not just the picture

The discipline behind approving hat proofs with Dirt Cheap Headwear carries across branded production: inspect the proof deliberately and make the approval explicit. For cards, that means confirming the stock, sides, artwork version and quantity together in one written reply.

Cost per card usually falls as quantity increases, and unused cards still cost money. Weigh the per-card saving against the chance of a phone number, role or branding changing before the box empties. Price the run you expect to circulate and get a bulk quote for it; if a smaller run plus a later reprint costs less across the year, that is the better order.

If you are ordering printed letterheads alongside the cards, check the business name and contact details across both jobs before approving either.

Keep an approval record

• File. Filename, version and approval date of the production PDF.
• Stock. Paper weight, finish and single- or double-sided printing.
• Quantity. The ordered run, noted against how long it should last.
• Sign-off. Who approved the proof and the written confirmation sent to the printer.

Upload the approved PDF, select the stock and quantity through the standard business-card or triplex ordering route, and check the final order summary against your written approval before completing payment.

The Print Warehouse Ltd offers business-card printing with material and finish options, artwork upload and proof previews. Visit The Print Warehouse Ltd to choose a stock that suits how your card will be used and prepare your print-ready order.