Do You Print Borders? How Borders Work

This is one of the most common questions we get, and it usually arrives about thirty seconds before someone uploads a file. The short answer: if your artwork has a border, we print it exactly as designed. If it doesn't, we print edge-to-edge, and we don't add one unless you ask.

The longer answer covers a minimum width requirement, a recommendation that changes with print size, and one situation where we might suggest a border you didn't plan on. Here's all of it.

Borders are not the same thing as bleed

These two get mixed up constantly, and they point in opposite directions.

A border is part of your design. It's intentional space between the edge of your image and the edge of the paper — usually unprinted white paper, sometimes a color you've built into the file. It lives inside the trim line, and you see it on the finished print.

Bleed is the opposite. It's extra artwork extending past the trim line that gets cut off and thrown away. Its only job is to guarantee that ink reaches the very edge of the sheet after cutting. You never see the bleed area on a finished print.

So a bordered print and a full-bleed print are two different design choices, and a file can need bleed whether or not it has a border. More on that below.

Our minimum border width is a quarter inch

If you're building a border into your artwork, make it at least 0.25" on every side. This isn't a preference. It's the point below which we can't guarantee the result will look intentional.

Here's why. Cutting paper has a tolerance. Blades drift slightly, stacks shift a hair under the clamp, and paper itself moves a little with humidity. Across the industry, a cut landing within about 1/16" of target is considered in spec, and ours are tight — but they are not zero.

If you design a 1/8" border and the cut drifts 1/16" to one side, you end up with roughly 1/16" of border on one edge and 3/16" on the other. That's a three-to-one difference, sitting right next to each other where the eye can compare them directly. The print looks crooked even though the cut was well within tolerance.

Give that same 1/16" of drift a quarter-inch border, and you get 3/16" versus 5/16" — still a difference, but proportionally much smaller and far harder to notice. The border is wide enough to absorb normal variation and appears fine, visually. 

At 8x10 and up, half-inch borders look better

A quarter inch is the floor, not the ideal. Once you get to 8x10 and larger, we'd steer you toward 0.5" or wider.

This is about proportion rather than tolerance. Borders read relative to the sheet they're on. On a 5x7, a quarter inch is a visible, deliberate-looking frame of white. On a 16x20, that same quarter inch is a sliver — it doesn't look like a design decision, it looks like something went slightly wrong at the trimmer.

As a rough starting point:

• 5x7 and smaller: 0.25" works fine
• 8x10 to 11x14: 0.5" is the sweet spot
• 16x20 and larger: 0.75" to 1" holds up better, especially if the piece is headed for a frame

These are suggestions, not rules. Wider borders are always fine with us — some artists go with two inches or more for a gallery look, and that prints beautifully.

We print edge-to-edge by default

If your file has no border, we assume that's what you want. Your image gets printed to the full sheet size, edge to edge, and we don't quietly add white space around it.

We think this is the right default. Adding an unrequested border changes the composition, shrinks your image, and produces something you didn't approve. If your art runs to the edge in the file, it runs to the edge on paper.

The one exception: files with no bleed

There's a single situation where a border might come up when you didn't plan for one — a full-bleed design submitted without the bleed area.

If your artwork is sized exactly to the finished dimensions with no extra image past the trim line, any normal cutting variation exposes a thin white sliver along one or more edges. There's no extra artwork to cut into, so the blade takes paper instead of ink.

We'll contact you before doing anything. We don't make this call silently. When we spot it in prepress, we reach out with the options, which usually include:

• Scale the art up slightly to create bleed — fast, but it crops a little off every edge, which matters if you have content near the border
• Extend or mirror the edges — works well on textures, gradients, and soft backgrounds; less well on hard geometry or lettering near the edge
• Add a border — sidesteps the problem entirely, since a bordered print doesn't need bleed at all
• Send a corrected file — always an option if you'd rather fix it at the source

You pick. Nothing goes to press until you've signed off.

You can ask us to add a border

If your file doesn't have a border and you want one, just tell us. Leave a note at checkout or email us with your order number and the border width you want, and we'll size your image down and center it on the sheet.

One thing to know before you ask: equal borders on all four sides require your image to match the sheet's aspect ratio.

An 8x10 sheet is 4:5. If your image is also 4:5, scaling it down produces a perfectly even border all the way around. But if your image is 3:2 — standard DSLR proportions — it doesn't fit 4:5 geometry. Fitting the full image inside the sheet leaves noticeably wider borders on the top and bottom than on the sides.

That's not automatically a problem. Uneven borders can look great, and some artists prefer a wider bottom margin deliberately, the way a mat is often cut with extra weight at the base. But if you're expecting a uniform frame of white, check your ratio first. Our print size calculator will tell you how your image maps to standard print sizes.

Colored borders need bleed

Worth calling out separately, because it surprises people. A white border is unprinted paper, so trim variation just means slightly more or less white — nothing to notice.

A colored border is printed, and it has to reach the edge of the sheet. That means it needs a bleed area.

If you're building a colored border, add the extra .125" to each side on top of the border width. If your art has a colored border and no bleed area, we will automatically add that bleed area for you.

Borders vs. mats on framed prints

If you're ordering a framed print, "border" might mean one of two different things.

A border is white space that's part of the print itself. A mat is a separate piece of board that sits between the print and the frame. They look similar from across the room, but they're built differently, and a print that already has a generous border may not need a mat at all — sometimes the two together read as heavy.

If you're unsure which you want for a framed order, ask us before you upload, and we'll walk through it.

Quick reference

Frequently asked questions

Are you still unsure how to set up your files with borders? Send us a message before you order. We'd rather answer a question up front than reprint something after.