Cutting tolerance is mechanical. Die cutters, rotary cutters, and guillotine blades all drift between impressions. Typically ±0.3–0.5mm on a well-maintained press, more on a worn or fast-running one. That's fine if the artwork stops well before the edge, but catastrophic if your design has a photograph or solid background running right up to the trim line. The cut drifts, and suddenly you have a thin white line on one side of every piece.
Bleed is the insurance policy. Push the color 3mm past the trim and it doesn't matter which way the cut drifts. The color is still there.
| Work type | Bleed (inches) | Bleed (mm) |
|---|---|---|
| Pressure-sensitive labels | 0.0625" | 1.5mm |
| Digital labels (HP Indigo, Xeikon) | 0.0625" | 1.5mm |
| Flexible packaging (pouches, film) | 0.125" | 3mm |
| Folding cartons | 0.125" | 3mm |
| Business cards / postcards | 0.125" | 3mm |
| Large-format (trade show banners) | 0.25"+ | 6mm+ |
These are starting points. Your specific print provider may require more. Roll-fed presses, wide webs, and specific die shapes sometimes need 0.25" or more. Always confirm.
There's a subtle difference between "I painted my background 3mm past the trim" and "my PDF declares 3mm of bleed." The press RIP reads the declared BleedBox from the PDF, not the visual extent of the art. If your export settings didn't include bleed marks, the BleedBox will equal the TrimBox, and automated preflight tools will report "no bleed". Even if you extended the art correctly on the canvas.
How to fix in Illustrator: File → Save As → Adobe PDF → Marks and Bleeds → set Bleed to 0.125" (or your target). This writes a proper BleedBox into the PDF. Same dialog in InDesign (File → Export → Adobe PDF → Marks and Bleeds).
If your design has a white margin on all four sides and no artwork touches the trim edge, bleed is irrelevant. There's nothing to slip past. Simple text-on-white business cards, center-anchored labels with a white border, brochures with generous internal margins all run fine without declared bleed.
Everything else needs it.
Preflight measures bleed per side and tells you whether your file meets your print profile's minimum. For labels, flexpack, or folding cartons.
Check a file →