Print at actual size on A4 and Letter

A template is only useful if it comes out of the printer at the size it was generated. This guide covers the settings that matter and the one check that catches most problems.

Choose the paper in the tool first

Pick A4 (210 × 297 mm) or US Letter (215.9 × 279.4 mm) in the tool before downloading. The PDF page is created at that exact size, so the viewer and printer should not need to scale anything. Orientation can be left on automatic; the tool picks the orientation and piece rotation that fits the most copies and reports the result.

Set the print dialog

1. Open the PDF in a viewer such as Adobe Acrobat Reader, Preview on macOS, or your browser's PDF viewer.
2. In the print dialog, select the same paper size you chose in the tool.
3. Set scaling to 100% or Actual size. Turn off every option named "Fit to page", "Fit to printable area", "Shrink oversized pages" or "Scale to fit".
4. Leave page orientation on automatic, or match the orientation shown in the PDF header.
5. Print one sheet first.

Check the ruler before cutting anything

Every template sheet carries a 50 mm ruler in its footer with ticks every 5 mm. Lay a real ruler against it. If the printed ruler reads 50 mm, the sheet is at scale. If it reads noticeably more or less, a scaling option is still on somewhere: check the viewer, the printer driver and the system print dialog.

Home printers and rulers are not laboratory instruments. A difference of about half a millimetre across 50 mm is within what you can reliably measure; a difference of a few millimetres is a settings problem.

Standalone print-scale test

This one-page download contains a horizontal and a vertical 50 mm reference and a 50 × 50 mm square, so you can check both axes. It is not a template sheet.

Margins and printable area

The margin in the tool (5–20 mm, default 10 mm) keeps the pattern away from the paper edge. Inside the margin, 12 mm at the top is reserved for the header and 18 mm at the bottom for the footer; copies are placed only in the remaining area. Most home printers cannot print right to the edge, so if you reduce the margin below about 10 mm, print a test to check that nothing is clipped.

When a piece does not fit the paper

If a flat pattern is larger than the pattern area, the tool disables the standard-paper PDF and explains why. Options, in order of simplicity:

• Switch orientation, or let the tool choose automatically.
• Reduce the margin, within what your printer can handle.
• Make the product slightly smaller, for example a shallower wall on a gift box.
• Download the custom-size PDF. Each page is sized to the piece at full scale and needs a larger printer or a print shop; it is not tiled across several sheets.
• Download the cut-and-score SVG, which is independent of paper size, for a cutting machine.

Do not correct the template for your printer

The tools never apply a printer correction factor and you should not scale the PDF to compensate for a misbehaving printer either; fix the scaling setting instead. Scale is only one part of fit. Paper thickness, how deeply you score, and glue all affect the assembled result, so always make one sample before a batch.