What is 'Bleed' and Why Does my Print Artwork Need it?

What is 'Bleed' and Why Does my Print Artwork Need it?

When we print your products, it is impossible to print accurately right to the edge of the paper. To counteract this limitation, we print a slightly larger size of your artwork than you require and then trim it to the correct size.

The bleed is the ‘extra artwork’ we print that then gets trimmed off to ensure your artwork goes to the edge of the page. This bleed is usually 3 mm on each side of the print so nothing you want to appear on the printed product should appear in this bleed as it will be chopped off, only an extension of the artworks ‘border’ or background’.

How to apply bleed

To apply bleed, you will need an extra 3 mm on each side of your artwork. For example, an A4 document in 210 mm X 297 mm so when you create your artwork it will need to be 216 mm x 303 mm to allow us to trim off the bleed. If you need any advice/help with setting up your bleed then contact a member of our graphic design team here.

How do I know if my bleed is correct?

Unsure if your bleed is correct or not? Our graphic design team can check it for you (for a small fee) as well as the quality of your images and fonts, the size of the file and whether this matches the intended print size, the trim marks and whether the font is correctly embedded.

To get our team to check your bleed, email enquiries@theprintinghouseltd.co.uk or call 01270 212100.