What size bleed does an A6 postcard need?
A standard A6 postcard is printed landscape with a 148 × 105 mm trim size and needs a 3 mm bleed on every edge, which makes the artwork board 154 × 111 mm and keeps important text and logos inside a 142 × 99 mm safe area.
The numbers
- Trim
- 148 × 105 mm
- Bleed box
- 154 × 111 mm
- Safe area
- 142 × 99 mm
- Page
- 160 × 117 mm
- The bleed box adds the 3 mm bleed to every edge of the trim, so 148 + 3 + 3 = 154 mm wide and 105 + 3 + 3 = 111 mm tall, giving a 154 × 111 mm bleed box.
- The safe area pulls the same 3 mm in from every edge of the trim, so 148 − 3 − 3 = 142 mm wide and 105 − 3 − 3 = 99 mm tall, giving a 142 × 99 mm safe area.
- The page adds room for crop marks on top of the bleed, so 148 + 6 + 6 = 160 mm wide and 105 + 6 + 6 = 117 mm tall, giving a 160 × 117 mm page.
- Bleed is only added once per edge, so the 3 mm bleed setting adds 6 mm to the total width and 6 mm to the total height, not 3 mm.
The most common mistake is building the artwork at exactly 148 × 105 mm with no bleed at all, so any background colour or image stops right at the trim line and a sliver of white paper shows up along one or two edges after the card is cut.
Crop marks sit outside the bleed box, which is why the full page ends up at 160 × 117 mm even though the finished postcard is only 148 × 105 mm.
Keep the safe area margin in mind for anything you do not want trimmed off, since cutting during production can shift by a fraction of a millimetre in either direction.
1 Set your sizeor start from a preset
Guides are placed in a PDF optional-content layer flagged not to print, so they stay visible on screen but are omitted when the file is printed.
2 Check the numbersthen download the PDF canvas
- Bleed154 × 111 mm
- Trim148 × 105 mm
- Safe area142 × 99 mm
| Box | mm | pt |
|---|---|---|
| Bleed box (make artwork this big) | 154 × 111 mm | 436.54 × 314.65 pt |
| Trim (final cut size) | 148 × 105 mm | 419.53 × 297.64 pt |
| Safe area (keep text inside) | 142 × 99 mm | 402.52 × 280.63 pt |
| PDF page (MediaBox) | 160 × 117 mm | 453.54 × 331.65 pt |
- Trim
148 × 105 mm- Bleed box
148 + 2 × 3 = 154 mm wide, 105 + 2 × 3 = 111 mm tallBleed is added here, and only here. Setting your document page size to the bleed box (154 × 111 mm) and then adding bleed again in your design software double-counts it, leaving a white gap at the crop marks.
- Safe area
148 - 2 × 3 = 142 mm wide, 105 - 2 × 3 = 99 mm tall- Marks
3 mm long, offset 3 mm from the trim edge- Page
148 + 2 × 6 = 160 mm wide, 105 + 2 × 6 = 117 mm tallThe page (160 × 117 mm) is larger than the bleed box (154 × 111 mm) so it has room for the crop and registration marks; the artwork itself does not need to fill the page.
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The generated PDF is a correctly sized blank canvas: a page with MediaBox, TrimBox, and BleedBox set to the dimensions you specify, plus crop marks showing where to cut. It does not contain any artwork.
Colour in the PDF is plain RGB or grayscale and is not colour-managed.
Confirm the bleed value with your printer before sending final artwork.