Business Card Size in Inches, mm and Pixels (With Bleed)

A business card file that’s the wrong size gets cropped, squashed or printed with a thin white edge, and you only find out when the box arrives. The trouble is that “standard business card size” depends on where you print. The US uses 3.5 x 2 inches, the UK and most of Europe use 85 x 55 mm, Japan uses 91 x 55 mm, and every printer adds its own amount of bleed on top.

Below: each size in inches, millimetres and pixels, what bleed means, and how to get your image to the right size.

Quick answer: The standard US business card size is 3.5 x 2 inches (88.9 x 50.8 mm), which is 1050 x 600 pixels at 300 DPI. With 1/8 inch bleed on each side the file is 3.75 x 2.25 inches (1125 x 675 px). In the UK and Europe the card is 85 x 55 mm (1004 x 650 px). Keep text at least 3 mm (about 1/8 inch) inside the trim.

Business card dimensions by country

None of these sizes comes from a standards body. They are what printers sell, so I’ve linked each one to printers’ own spec pages. The pixel columns are my arithmetic: millimetres divided by 25.4, times 300, rounded.

Sources: the US size is on Vistaprint’s size guide, Staples and MOO. The 85 x 55 mm card is on Vistaprint UK and Instantprint’s artwork guide. Japan’s 91 x 55 mm comes from Raksul and Graphic. For China I could only find 90 x 54 mm on Baidu Baike, not on a printer’s own spec page, and Baidu Baike gives bleed anywhere from 1 to 3 mm, so confirm with your print shop. The Indonesian 9 x 5.5 cm size is what Snapy and other local printers sell. The credit card size is the ID-1 format in ISO/IEC 7810.

If your printer asks for 600 DPI, double the pixel numbers. A US card becomes 2100 x 1200.

Business card size vs credit card size

Both go in the same wallet slot, so people assume they match. They don’t. An ID-1 card, the format of credit cards and many ID cards, is 85.60 x 53.98 mm. A US business card is about 3 mm wider and 3 mm shorter. A European 85 x 55 mm card is nearly credit-card width but a millimetre taller. For a membership or ID-style card, use the credit card size preset instead.

What bleed and the safe zone mean

Cutting machines aren’t perfectly accurate. If your background colour stops exactly at the card edge, a cut that drifts slightly outward leaves a sliver of white paper. Bleed fixes that: you extend the background past the trim line, and the extra gets cut off.

The safe zone is the opposite margin, inside the trim. A cut that drifts inward can clip anything placed too close to the edge, so text, logos and QR codes stay inside it.

The catch is that printers don’t agree on how much bleed to add. Here is what each one asks for on a US 3.5 x 2 inch card, or the local standard size:

Figures come from Staples’ card page, Vistaprint, MOO’s design guidelines, Vistaprint UK, Instantprint and Raksul.

So 1/8 inch (or 3 mm) per side is common, but it isn’t a rule. Vistaprint’s US numbers work out to about 0.055 inch per side. Send them a 3.75 x 2.25 inch file and it won’t match their template, which means your margins won’t land where you planned. Download the template for the exact product before you start.

Pixels for a business card at 300 DPI

Staples recommends at least 300 DPI, and Vistaprint’s pixel figures assume it. Multiply inches by 300, or divide millimetres by 25.4 first.

A logo saved from a website is often a few hundred pixels wide. Stretch 400 pixels across a 3.5 inch card and you get about 114 DPI, which prints soft. Resizing can’t invent detail, so start from the largest original you have. The image size for print guide covers DPI in more depth.

How to make a business card image in ResizeAny

ResizeAny runs in your browser and uploads nothing. It gets a photo, logo or finished design to an exact pixel size and DPI. It doesn’t draw bleed guides, convert to CMYK or export PDF, so if your printer insists on CMYK PDFs, do the last export in a design app.

1. Pick a preset. Use 1050 x 600 px for a US card without bleed, business card with bleed for a 3.75 x 2.25 inch file at 300 DPI, or 85 x 55 mm for a UK or European card.
2. Drop in your image.
3. Open Ratio & fit and choose Crop if your image isn’t already card-shaped. These presets start on Stretch, which hits the exact size but squashes a photo that has a different shape. Crop fills the card and trims the edges instead.
4. Choose JPG or PNG and download. ResizeAny writes the DPI value into JPG and PNG files, so the printer sees 300 DPI and the right physical size.

The inch and cm business card presets have no DPI set, so they convert at 96 DPI and give you only 336 x 192 pixels. Type 300 in the DPI box before you resize. For other print sizes, the print, paper and photo presets list every ready-made size.

Before you order, hold the file up against the printer’s template one last time: background into the bleed, text inside the safe line, pixels matching the template at 300 DPI. Five minutes now beats reprinting the whole order.