Business Card Size in Pixels: DPI Reference Table

The short answer: a standard US business card at 300 DPI is 1050×600 pixels. Add a 0.125-inch bleed on all sides and that grows to 1125×675 pixels — the size most print shops want you to submit.

Everything else depends on DPI (dots per inch). The table below gives you exact pixel dimensions for the three resolutions you will encounter: 72 DPI (screen mockups), 150 DPI (draft-quality print), and 300 DPI (professional print).

Business Card Pixels by DPI

This table covers the standard US size (3.5 × 2 inches) with and without bleed.

300 DPI without bleed works for home laser printers or digital proofs. 300 DPI with bleed is what commercial printers (Moo, Vistaprint, Overnight Prints) require for submission.

Business Card Size by Region

The standard varies by country. If you are designing for an international client or printing abroad, use the correct regional size.

A few things to note:

• EU and UK bleed is typically 3mm (not 0.125 in). Convert: 3 mm = 0.118 in, which is close enough that most print shops accept either convention. Ask your printer before finalizing.
• Japanese cards (91 × 55 mm) are slightly wider than the EU standard. If you are localizing for Japan, that 16 extra pixels horizontally matters for layout.
• Australian printers often accept US-standard templates, but the physical cards are 1mm narrower — check with your print shop before submitting a US-spec file.

Understanding Bleed and Safe Zones

Bleed exists because cutting machines are not perfectly precise. A guillotine cutter can drift by 1–2 mm. If your background color stops exactly at the card edge, that drift shows up as a white sliver along one side.

The fix is bleed: extend your background and any full-bleed elements 0.125 inches (3.175 mm) beyond the final card edge on all four sides. When the printer cuts, any drift lands inside your bleed margin and the card looks clean.

Bleed dimensions in full

For US standard (3.5 × 2 inches):

• Canvas size with bleed: 3.75 × 2.25 inches = 1125 × 675 px at 300 DPI
• Cut line: 3.5 × 2 inches = 1050 × 600 px
• Safe zone for text and logos: 3.25 × 1.75 inches = 975 × 525 px (0.125 in inside the cut line on each side)

Keep all text, logos, and critical design elements inside the safe zone — 5mm (or 0.2 in) in from the cut edge is a comfortable margin. Elements that bleed off the card (a photo background, a solid color fill) should extend all the way to the bleed edge.

In practical terms:

• Bleed edge (canvas boundary): extend background colors and full-bleed images here
• Cut line (trim line): where the card will be cut — nothing critical should sit exactly on this line
• Safe zone: your real working area — keep everything important here

Which DPI Should You Use for Business Cards?

Use 300 DPI. Full stop.

Here is why the other options fall short:

72 DPI is a screen resolution. A 72 DPI card looks fine on your monitor and prints as a blurry mess. The pixels are simply too large — a 300 DPI printer will scale up your 252×144 image and every edge will look jagged.

150 DPI produces passable results on inkjet printers for personal use. For anything you hand to a client, investor, or colleague, 150 DPI shows. Text looks soft, logos look fuzzy, and fine lines drop out. The file is smaller, but the tradeoff is not worth it.

300 DPI is the industry minimum for commercial offset and digital print. Most professional print shops will reject or warn you about files below 300 DPI. Some premium shops (letterpress, foil stamping, embossing) want 600 DPI for fine detail work, but 300 DPI is the standard you should design to.

If your design software has a resolution option (Photoshop, Affinity Photo, GIMP), set the document to 300 DPI when you create the canvas. Changing DPI after the fact — without resampling — only changes how the image is interpreted, not the actual pixel count. See how to change image DPI for a full explanation of the difference.

For a deeper look at resolution vs pixel dimensions and why they are not the same thing, see what is image resolution.

How to Resize an Image to Business Card Size

If you have an existing design or photo that you need to size to business card dimensions, here is the Pixotter workflow:

1. Go to pixotter.com/resize/.
2. Drop your image onto the resize tool — JPEG, PNG, or WebP all work.
3. Set width to 1125 and height to 675 (300 DPI with bleed, US standard). Or use 1050 × 600 if your printer does not require bleed.
4. Choose "Exact" mode to lock to those precise dimensions (rather than fitting within a bounding box).
5. Download the resized image.

Everything runs in your browser. Your image is never uploaded to a server — processing happens locally via WebAssembly. No signup, no wait, no file size limit within reason.

If your resized file is larger than your printer's submission limit, run it through Pixotter's image compressor to reduce file size without changing dimensions.

A few things to keep in mind when resizing for print:

• Upscaling degrades quality. If your source image is 400×300 px and you scale it to 1125×675 px, you are inventing pixels. The result will look soft or blocky. Start with a high-resolution source — ideally a vector export (PDF, SVG) or a photo taken at sufficient resolution.
• Check your color mode. Screen images are RGB. Print prefers CMYK. Most inkjet and digital print shops accept RGB just fine, but offset lithography shops may require a CMYK PDF. If color accuracy matters (brand colors, photography), check with your printer.
• Safe zone still applies. Resizing the canvas does not move your content into the safe zone. If text was close to the edge in your original, check its position after resizing.

For standard reference sizes across other common print formats, see standard photo dimensions. For other document paper sizes, see the A4 size in pixels guide and the US Letter size in pixels guide.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the pixel size for a business card at 300 DPI?

Standard US business card (3.5 × 2 in) at 300 DPI: 1050 × 600 pixels without bleed. With 0.125-inch bleed on all sides: 1125 × 675 pixels. This is the size commercial printers expect.

What size is a business card in Photoshop?

Create a new document at 3.75 × 2.25 inches (with bleed) or 3.5 × 2 inches (without), resolution set to 300 pixels/inch, color mode RGB (or CMYK if going to offset press). That gives you a 1125 × 675 px or 1050 × 600 px canvas respectively.

Can I use a 72 DPI image for printing?

No. 72 DPI is a screen resolution. Printed at 300 DPI output, a 72 DPI source image will appear roughly one-quarter the size you expect — or scale up and look blurry. Always create print assets at 300 DPI from the start.

What is the bleed size for a business card?

The US standard bleed is 0.125 inches (3.175 mm) on all four sides. EU and international bleed is typically 3 mm per side. Always confirm with your specific printer — some shops use non-standard bleed margins.

Is the safe zone the same as the bleed?

No. Bleed is the area outside the cut line that your background extends into. Safe zone is the area inside the cut line where you keep text and logos. For a US business card: bleed adds 0.125 in on each side (making the canvas 3.75 × 2.25 in), and the safe zone is 0.125 in inside the cut line (making the live area 3.25 × 1.75 in).

How do I reduce business card image file size without losing quality?

If your 300 DPI JPEG or PNG is too large for a printer's upload limit, compress it. For JPEG, quality 90–95 retains all visible detail at a fraction of the file size. For PNG, lossless compression (like Pixotter's compress tool) strips metadata and optimizes encoding without touching a single pixel. See how to reduce image size for a step-by-step guide.

The number to remember: 1125 × 675 px at 300 DPI — US standard with bleed, ready for any commercial printer. Build your canvas to that size, keep text inside the 975 × 525 safe zone, and you will not have to rework the file when the print shop flags it.