Adding bleed to your design in Canva

What is bleed and do I need it?

You only need to add bleed if your design goes right to the edge of the page. If it does, you need to include an extra 3mm on all sides of your page/document and extend your design into this area. This is to stop white edges of the card showing when the card is trimmed to size after printing.

If your design requires bleed, you'll need to follow these steps whether you're ordering digital printing, Letterpress or Hot Foil Press.

Canva automatically includes bleed when you create a design. Just select 'show print bleed' from the settings menu.

Extending your design into the bleed

• Create a new document at the size you would like.
• Canva shows the bleed area with a darker grey area 3mm around the outside of your document, your document edge is marked by a grey dashed line (this won't print 😊).
• Grab the artwork that needs to extend into the bleed and scale/move it outwards.
• Any illustrations or text that reaches the edge of the page will need to be in this bleed area like the flowers at the bottom of the design below.

(If you'd like a background colour in your design, then change the background colour as normal. You won’t need to scale it, as Canva automatically extends into the bleed when exporting if you tick the crop and bleed checkbox).

When you're ready to download

Check the tick box for Crop marks and bleed and choose CMYK (best for professional printing) from the Color Profile option. CMYK is recommended however it is a Canva Pro feature and not essential.

Related articles:

How do I set up my artwork in Canva?

What is bleed, crop marks and the safe area?

Extending text into the bleed