Sticker bleed and safe area
A sticker is three rectangles rather than one. There is the finished shape you order, the slightly larger canvas the artwork has to fill so that a small wobble in the cut still lands on ink, and the smaller area inside where text and logos can sit without crowding the edge. Type the finished size and this works out the other two.
The three rectangles
| Rectangle | Width | Height | What it is |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cut / trim | 3 in | 2 in | The finished sticker you ordered |
| Canvas with bleed | 3.25 in | 2.25 in | Build the artboard at this size and fill it edge to edge |
| Safe content | 2.75 in | 1.75 in | Keep text and logos inside this rectangle |
- Safe area as a share of the cut size
- 80.2%
- Inset from the canvas edge
- 0.25 in
Area against area, so an over-large margin shows up as a number instead of a feeling.
Bleed plus safe margin — where the guide goes when the artboard is the canvas.
Resolution across the canvas
Add the pixel width and height of your artwork to read the resolution across the canvas. The three rectangles above do not depend on it.
No cut path is opened here and none is produced. Every figure is arithmetic on the dimensions you typed — enough to lay out an artboard, not a replacement for the proof your printer sends back.
Everything runs on this page. Nothing is uploaded, stored or sent anywhere.
| Answers | Which rectangle does the artwork have to fill, and where does content have to stop? |
|---|---|
| You provide | Finished sticker width and height, a bleed amount, a safe margin, and your unit |
| You get | Cut size, canvas including bleed, safe content area, and the safe share of the trim |
| Where bleed goes | On both edges of each axis — 0.125 in of bleed widens a sticker by 0.25 in overall |
| Resolution read from | The bleed canvas, since that is the surface the pixels have to cover end to end |
| Runs | Addition and subtraction on this page; no file is uploaded and no cut path is opened |
The canvas is wider than the sticker on both sides
Bleed is not a border you add once. It extends past the cut on every edge, so each axis grows by twice the bleed amount, and the mistake this catches is the single-count version: a 2 in sticker with 0.125 in of bleed needs a 2.25 in canvas, not a 2.125 in one. The wrong figure looks plausible because it is larger than the sticker, which is exactly why it survives until something is cut with a white sliver down one side.
- Cut size is what you ordered and what arrives in the packet
- Canvas is cut size plus bleed on all four edges — the artboard you actually build on
- Safe area is cut size minus the margin on all four edges — where content can live
- Artwork has to reach the canvas edge; anything short of it can show as an unprinted line
Effective resolution belongs to the canvas, not the cut
Divide your pixels by the finished size and the number comes out too high, because the file also has to cover the bleed band. A 1200 px wide image on a 3 in sticker reads as 400 DPI against the cut and 369 DPI against a 3.25 in canvas. That gap is small and it always errs the same way — upward — so the tool prints both figures side by side and treats the canvas one as the measurement. Required pixel counts here are worked out across the canvas for the same reason.
- Canvas DPI is the reading; the cut figure is shown only so the difference is visible
- The narrower of the two axes sets the limit, and the tool names which one it was
- The pixel target is the count needed to reach your chosen DPI across the whole canvas
A margin can be larger than the sticker allows
Because the safe margin comes off both edges, any value at or above half the shorter side leaves nothing behind. Rather than showing a negative width dressed up as a measurement, the result says no safe rectangle exists, names the axis that ran out, and gives the value the margin has to stay under. On a long thin sticker one axis can fail while the other still has room, and knowing which one is the difference between reshaping the design and reordering the sticker.
- A margin equal to half the short side leaves a line, not an area
- Width and height are tested separately, so a 4 × 1 in sticker fails the height first
- Zero bleed and zero margin are accepted as answers — some jobs really do use them
The numbers themselves come from your printer
This page does not tell you what bleed to use. Cutting tolerance depends on the machine, the material, the lamination and how the sheet was fed, so the figure that is generous at one shop is tight at another, and kiss-cut, die-cut and contour-cut jobs are not asked for the same allowance. The fields open with a common starting value so there is something to see; before a real order, get the bleed and safe margin from whoever will produce the stickers and type theirs in.
- Ask for both figures together — a shop that specifies one usually specifies the other
- Check whether the shop wants the cut path supplied, and in what form
- Sheet and roll orders can carry different allowances even at the same printer
FAQ
- How much bleed does a sticker need?
- There is no single figure to quote here, because the allowance follows the cutting tolerance of the machine that will produce your order. Ask the shop, then type their number in. The value the fields open with is a starting point so the calculator has something to show, not a requirement.
- Does 0.125 in of bleed make a 2 in sticker 2.125 in?
- No — it makes it 2.25 in. Bleed is added to the left and the right of the width, and to the top and the bottom of the height, so each axis picks up twice the amount you enter. The same doubling applies to the safe margin in the other direction.
- Is the safe margin just bleed measured inwards?
- They are separate settings that happen to work along the same edge. Bleed is artwork that extends past the cut and gets thrown away; the safe margin is a strip inside the cut that you deliberately keep clear of text and logos so nothing important sits where a small cutting shift would clip it.
- Does this check my cut line or die line?
- It does not. Nothing is uploaded and no file is opened, so there is no path here to inspect. Every figure on the page is addition, subtraction and division applied to the dimensions you typed, which is useful for laying out an artboard and is not a substitute for the proof your printer sends back.