How to Add Bleed to a Label
Enter the finished size
Type the width and height of the label after it is cut, and a corner radius if it has rounded corners.
Set bleed and safe margin
Use the bleed your printer asks for, and a safe margin to keep important content away from the edge.
Set up your file
Make your design the artwork size shown, or download the SVG, PNG or PDF template and design on top of it.
What Bleed and Safe Area Mean
Labels are printed on larger sheets or rolls and then cut to shape. The cut is never perfectly on the line, so anything that should touch the edge of the label (a background colour, a photo, a pattern) must extend past the cut line. That extra strip is the bleed. After cutting, it is thrown away.
The safe area works the other way. It is a margin inside the cut line where you keep text, logos and barcodes, so a slightly shifted cut can't trim them.
How to Calculate the Size With Bleed
Bleed is added to every edge, so each dimension grows by twice the bleed. The safe area shrinks by twice the safe margin.
Artwork width = finished width + 2 × bleed
Artwork height = finished height + 2 × bleed
Safe area = finished size − 2 × safe margin
Pixels = artwork size in inches × DPI
| Finished size | Bleed per edge | Artwork size | Pixels |
|---|---|---|---|
| 3 × 2 in | 1/8 in | 3.25 × 2.25 in | 975 × 675 px |
| 100 × 60 mm | 3 mm | 106 × 66 mm | 1252 × 780 px |
With a 1/8 in safe margin, the 3 × 2 in label has a safe area of 2.75 × 1.75 in. Pixel sizes are rounded to whole pixels.
How Much Bleed Do You Need?
There is no single standard. Many print shops ask for 1/8 in (3.175 mm) on every edge, and 3 mm is a common request in metric countries. Some digital label printers ask for less, such as 1/16 in or 2 mm, and some ask for more. The amount your printer lists in its file specifications always wins over any general rule.
- Printing at home and cutting by hand or with a cutting machine: 1/16 to 1/8 in (1.5–3 mm) of bleed gives you room for small cutting errors.
- Ordering from a print shop: use exactly the bleed in their specs. Too little can show white edges; extra bleed is usually fine but check first.
- Designs with a white border: if nothing touches the edge you don't strictly need bleed, but many printers still want files set up with it.
Bleed is added to each edge, not split between them. A 1/8 in bleed makes the file 1/4 in wider and 1/4 in taller than the finished label.
Bleed on Labels With Rounded Corners
On a rounded rectangle, every line keeps the same distance from the cut line. The bleed corner is therefore larger than the cut corner, and the safe-area corner is smaller:
Bleed corner radius = corner radius + bleed
Safe corner radius = corner radius − safe margin
If the safe margin is larger than the corner radius, the safe area simply gets square corners. The template draws all three outlines this way, so you don't have to work them out in your design app.
Setting Up Your Design File
Apps with a bleed setting, such as Adobe InDesign, Illustrator and Affinity, let you make the document the finished size and enter the bleed in the document setup. The bleed then sits outside the page edge. Export your PDF with bleed turned on.
In apps without a bleed setting, make the canvas the artwork size from this calculator. Place the downloaded SVG or PNG template on its own layer as a guide, keep the background running to the blue dashed line, keep text inside the green dotted line, and hide the template before you export.
For raster artwork, the pixel size shown is what you need at the chosen resolution. To check an image you already have, use the Label DPI Calculator. For round labels, the Round Label Size Calculator draws circular bleed and safe lines.