What size bleed does an EU business card need?
A standard EU business card has an 85 × 55 mm trim size and needs a 3 mm bleed on every edge, which makes the artwork board 91 × 61 mm and keeps important text and logos inside a 79 × 49 mm safe area.
The numbers
- Trim
- 85 × 55 mm
- Bleed box
- 91 × 61 mm
- Safe area
- 79 × 49 mm
- Page
- 97 × 67 mm
- The bleed box adds the 3 mm bleed to every edge of the trim, so 85 + 3 + 3 = 91 mm wide and 55 + 3 + 3 = 61 mm tall, giving a 91 × 61 mm bleed box.
- The safe area pulls the same 3 mm in from every edge of the trim, so 85 − 3 − 3 = 79 mm wide and 55 − 3 − 3 = 49 mm tall, giving a 79 × 49 mm safe area.
- The page adds room for crop marks on top of the bleed, so 85 + 6 + 6 = 97 mm wide and 55 + 6 + 6 = 67 mm tall, giving a 97 × 67 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 85 × 55 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 97 × 67 mm even though the finished card is only 85 × 55 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
- Bleed91 × 61 mm
- Trim85 × 55 mm
- Safe area79 × 49 mm
| Box | mm | pt |
|---|---|---|
| Bleed box (make artwork this big) | 91 × 61 mm | 257.95 × 172.91 pt |
| Trim (final cut size) | 85 × 55 mm | 240.94 × 155.91 pt |
| Safe area (keep text inside) | 79 × 49 mm | 223.94 × 138.9 pt |
| PDF page (MediaBox) | 97 × 67 mm | 274.96 × 189.92 pt |
- Trim
85 × 55 mm- Bleed box
85 + 2 × 3 = 91 mm wide, 55 + 2 × 3 = 61 mm tallBleed is added here, and only here. Setting your document page size to the bleed box (91 × 61 mm) and then adding bleed again in your design software double-counts it, leaving a white gap at the crop marks.
- Safe area
85 - 2 × 3 = 79 mm wide, 55 - 2 × 3 = 49 mm tall- Marks
3 mm long, offset 3 mm from the trim edge- Page
85 + 2 × 6 = 97 mm wide, 55 + 2 × 6 = 67 mm tallThe page (97 × 67 mm) is larger than the bleed box (91 × 61 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.