ID card and badge sizes, with the pixel dimensions you actually design to

The CR80 standard, and why nearly every card uses it

The card in your wallet (debit card, driving licence, most office passes) is the CR80 size defined by the ISO/IEC 7810 standard. It measures 85.6 × 54 mm, or 3.375 × 2.125 inches, with rounded corners at roughly a 3 mm radius. That precise size exists so cards fit every wallet slot, badge holder, lanyard sleeve and card printer on earth. If you are not sure what size to make a card, make it CR80 and it will be compatible with off-the-shelf holders and printers.

A printer thinks in dots, not millimetres, so you have to convert. At 300 DPI, the print resolution card printers expect, a CR80 card is about 1011 × 638 px. The arithmetic is straightforward: 85.6 mm is 3.37 inches, and 3.37 inches × 300 dots per inch is roughly 1011 dots across; 54 mm is 2.125 inches × 300, or about 638 dots tall. Design at fewer pixels and the photo and text look soft once printed; design at far more and you only add file weight without making the print any sharper. If you want the full reasoning behind translating a physical size into a pixel count, the centimetres-to-print guide covers the cm/inch/DPI maths that the table below applies.

A second set of details matters too: corner radius and the chip/stripe zones. CR80 corners are rounded to about a 3 mm radius, which is why a square-cornered design looks subtly wrong in a real holder. If your card carries a magnetic stripe it sits along the back's long edge, and a smart-card chip sits front-left, so leave those areas clear of important artwork so the card still reads in a terminal.

Card and badge sizes in mm, inches and pixels

These are the sizes you will meet most often. The pixel column assumes 300 DPI, the standard for card and badge printing. CR79 is the slightly smaller adhesive variant used for stickers and proximity overlays; the larger formats are typical event and conference badges that go in a lanyard pouch.

Portrait or landscape: pick the orientation first

CR80 is the same card whether you print it landscape or portrait; the dimensions just swap. Orientation is a design decision, not a different size, but choose it before you lay anything out because it changes where the photo and lanyard slot sit, and switching halfway means re-flowing every element. The single most common mistake is designing a landscape card and then realising the lanyard punches the long edge, leaving the card hanging sideways.

• Landscape (85.6 × 54 mm) is the default for wallet cards, debit cards and access cards that live in a slot, where the magnetic stripe or chip runs along the long edge.
• Portrait (54 × 85.6 mm) is the standard for staff and student IDs worn on a vertical lanyard, because the slot punch goes at the short top edge and the photo sits comfortably up top.
• Event and visitor badges are almost always portrait so the name reads large from across a room while the badge hangs from a lanyard.

If you have a card the wrong way round, you do not need to rebuild it. Rotate the artwork with the rotate image tool and then resize to the orientation's pixel dimensions.

Bleed, safe area and the trim line

Bleed and safe area are what first-time card designers usually miss. A card printer cuts (or for plastic cards, prints edge to edge over) the artwork, and that cut is never perfect to the pixel. If your background runs exactly to the card edge, a fraction of a millimetre of misalignment leaves a thin white line on one side. Bleed and safe area exist to absorb that misalignment.

Bleed: extend past the edge

Bleed is artwork you deliberately extend beyond the finished card edge so there is something to cut into. A 2 mm bleed all round is standard for CR80; some print shops ask for 3 mm. At 300 DPI, 2 mm is about 24 px, so a CR80 design with bleed is roughly 1059 × 686 px rather than 1011 × 638 px. Any background colour, photo or pattern that should reach the edge must fill the bleed too.

Safe area: keep important things in

The safe area is the opposite margin. Keep text, the photo, logos and the QR code at least 3 to 4 mm (about 35–48 px at 300 DPI) inside the trim line so nothing important gets clipped if the cut drifts. The visible result is a card where the design feels comfortably contained rather than crammed to the border.

How it stacks up on a CR80 card

Put together, a print-ready CR80 file at 300 DPI has three nested rectangles: an outer bleed box of about 1059 × 686 px, the finished trim at 1011 × 638 px, and an inner safe area around 941 × 568 px where all the text and the photo live. Background colour fills the whole outer box; nothing you cannot afford to lose touches the trim line. Hold to that and the card prints clean no matter how the cutter drifts.

Photo, logo and QR code placement

Where things sit on a card is partly convention and partly what scanners and humans need. A card is read two ways, by a person glancing at it across a desk and by a camera or reader scanning a code, so the layout has to serve both. A few rules cover most cards and badges.

• Photo: aim for a head-and-shoulders portrait around 25 × 32 mm (roughly 295 × 378 px at 300 DPI) on a CR80 card, placed top-left on landscape cards or centred-top on portrait IDs. Crop it to a clean rectangle first — the resize in pixels tool sets the exact size, or use the passport photo maker to get a properly framed, plain-background headshot.
• Logo: keep it small and high-contrast in a top corner; a wordmark reads better than a detailed crest at card scale.
• Name and ID number: the name should be the largest text on a worn badge so it is readable from a metre or two; the ID/employee number can be smaller, near the photo.
• QR code or barcode: leave a quiet zone (clear margin) around it and keep it at least 15 × 15 mm so phone cameras lock on. Place it bottom-right or on the back, never overlapping the photo or bleed.
• Back of the card: emergency contact, return-if-found text, terms, or a magnetic-stripe zone — design the back as a second CR80 face with the same bleed and safe area.

Sizing for school, employee, visitor and event cards

The size standard barely changes across card types — what changes is orientation, what you print on it, the security features it needs, and how many you make at once. A single staff card and a thousand-strong conference run start from the same CR80 dimensions; the difference is workflow, not measurement.

• Employee / staff IDs: CR80, usually portrait on a lanyard, with photo, name, department and an access QR or proximity chip. Keep a consistent template so a whole team's cards match.
• Student IDs: CR80 portrait, photo plus roll/admission number and a barcode for library and attendance systems. Schools often need a class set at once.
• Visitor / contractor badges: a 4 × 3 in event-size badge or a CR80 with a bold VISITOR band; often printed on the day, so a fast template matters.
• Conference / event badges: portrait 4 × 3 in or 4.25 × 6 in in a lanyard pouch — large name, small affiliation, optional session QR.

When you have to make a batch (a class, a department, a delegate list), the bulk ID card maker fills one template from a list of names and photos so every card is identical in size and layout. Because everything runs in your browser, the staff and student photos you load never leave your device.