Standard Business Card Size: 3.5 x 2 in, Bleed and Pixels

Square and Rounded Corner Business Card Sizes

A square business card is 2.5 x 2.5 inches and a rounded corner card is a standard 3.5 x 2 inch card with a 0.25 inch radius cut into each corner. We print both, and neither one changes the bleed rule or the safe margin: 0.125 inch out, 0.125 inch in, same as every other card.

One extra rule for a rounded card: the corner is cut by a die, and a die has a little more play than a blade. Pull anything you care about a full 0.25 inch in from the corners rather than the usual eighth, and never run a thin frame around a rounded card. Square and rounded corner cards are not on our online order form yet, so they are quoted by hand. Tell us the quantity and the stock at our contact page or call (210) 293-5651 and we will price it and send the artwork specs back with the quote.

What Is Bleed on a Business Card?

Bleed is the 0.125 inch band of artwork that runs past the trim line and gets cut away, which is 3 mm on all four sides. It exists because paper and blades move, by very little, but never by nothing.

Picture a card with a navy background. If the file stops at 3.5 x 2 and the cut lands a hundredth of an inch inside the line, you get a thin white edge on a card that was supposed to be navy to the corner. Extend the navy out to 3.75 x 2.25 and that same shift cuts navy instead of paper, and nobody can tell the blade moved at all.

So bleed is not a design decision, it is insurance. Missing bleed is the most common problem we catch on a proof, and it is one of the questions worth asking before you buy cards.

What Is the Safe Zone on a Business Card?

The safe zone is the 3.25 x 1.75 inch area in the middle of the card where your content is guaranteed to survive the cut. Cards are not trimmed one at a time. They print many-up on a large sheet, the sheets are stacked, and the stack is cut. That is why the cut is accurate rather than perfect.

Hold your text, your logo, your phone number and your QR code 0.125 inch in from the trim on every side. Anything inside that box looks centered on every card in the run, not just on the ones near the top of the stack.

Business Card Size in Pixels

A business card is 1050 x 600 pixels at 300 dpi. Pixels only mean something once you attach a resolution, and print resolution is 300 dpi. At 300 dpi the trim is 1050 x 600 px, the bleed file is 1125 x 675 px, and the safe area is 975 x 525 px. Those are the numbers to enter in Photoshop, Canva, or anything else that thinks in pixels.

Here is the trap. A card that looks fine on screen at 72 dpi is only 252 x 144 px, roughly a quarter of the detail a press needs in each direction. Printed at card size it goes soft, and small type goes fuzzy first. Vector art, an AI or EPS or layered PDF, has no resolution to run out of and is always the better send.

What Size Is a Vertical Business Card?

A vertical card is not a different size. It trims at 2 x 3.5 in, the file is 2.25 x 3.75 in with bleed, and the safe area is 1.75 x 3.25 in. Same card, turned ninety degrees, same wallet and same card case.

Vertical layouts read well for a single strong logo, a headshot, or a short title block, and they stand out in a stack of horizontal cards. The back prints at the same price as the front on our 16pt stock, so a vertical front costs you nothing on the second side.

Business Card Sizes Outside the United States

The 3.5 x 2 in card is a North American convention, not a world standard. The three sizes you are most likely to run into:

• United States and Canada: 3.5 x 2 in, or 89 x 51 mm.
• Europe and the United Kingdom: 85 x 55 mm, narrower and taller than a US card.
• Japan: 91 x 55 mm, the largest of the three.

Those gaps are small in millimeters and obvious in a wallet. US card slots, badge holders and card cases are all cut for 3.5 x 2, so a European card sits loose in the slot and a Japanese card will not seat at all. If your cards are going to US customers, stay at 3.5 x 2. If you truly need an international size, call (210) 293-5651 and we will talk it through.

Mistakes We Catch on Proofs

Four things account for nearly every business card file we send back, and all four are size problems wearing a different hat.

A thin border sitting an eighth of an inch off the edge. A hairline frame looks even on some cards in the run and visibly uneven on others, because the frame is what makes a small cut shift measurable to the eye. If you want a framed look, make the frame thick enough that a shift does not register, or let the color bleed off the edge and skip the outline entirely.

Text sitting on the trim line. A phone number or a website that ends 0.05 inch from the edge reads fine on screen and gets shaved on a real stack. This is the single most common reason we hold a proof.

An RGB file, or a 72 dpi one. RGB has colors a press cannot mix, so bright screen blues and greens come back duller than the artist expected. A 72 dpi file has about a quarter of the detail in each direction that the press needs, so the type softens. Convert to CMYK at 300 dpi before you export, and you will see on screen roughly what you get on paper.

A file built at 3.5 x 2 with no bleed at all. We can usually extend a flat background color out for you, but we cannot invent the missing edge of a photo. Build at 3.75 x 2.25 from the start and this never comes up.

What to Send Us

A print-ready PDF at 3.75 x 2.25 inches, CMYK, 300 dpi, fonts outlined or embedded, all text inside the safe zone, and both sides as separate pages. That file goes straight to press.

There is no setup fee. Upload any image or file and we make it print ready: size, bleed, resolution and color. If you have no design at all, Design it for me is +$30 and a designer builds the card from scratch with two revisions included. Either way you see a free digital proof before anything prints, production is 48 hours once you approve it, and cards are printed in the USA and shipped anywhere in the country for a flat $10 ground shipping per order. If budget is the real question, we ran every pack price and the per-card math in how much business cards cost.

Our Business Card Dimensions Visual Guide

Three cards, the same three lines on each, with every number in millimeters, inches and pixels at 300 dpi. Swipe through them and build to the one you need.