QR codes on business cards: how small can you go?
A UK business card is 85 by 55 millimetres, and once the name, number and logo are placed, the code gets a corner of perhaps 20 by 20. Whether that corner works is decided less by the printer than by what you ask the pattern to carry.
Print craft4 min read
The minimums, in millimetres
The usual sizing rule says a code should be a tenth of its scanning distance, which for a card read at arm’s length would mean 25mm. Cards get a little grace because they are scanned deliberately, close up, by someone who wants the scan to work. In practice, for a code carrying a short link:
- 12mm reliably fails, on ordinary phones in ordinary light.
- 13 to 14mm is marginal: it works on a good camera held steady, which is not the test that matters.
- 15mm is the practical floor.
- 18 to 20mm scans without ceremony, and most card layouts can find it.
These widths include the quiet zone, the empty border that is part of the code. The sources for the floor, and the module arithmetic underneath it, are in the print guide.
What the pattern carries sets how small it can go
Everything above assumed a short link, and that assumption is doing more work than anything the printer does. The pattern is a grid, and the grid grows with its contents. A short redirect link of around 25 characters produces a grid 33 squares across, which is what reads happily at 15mm.
A full vCard is a different object. Name, company, two phone numbers, an email address and a postal address come to 250 characters or more, and the grid needed to hold them is nearly seventy squares across. Squeezed into a 20mm corner, each square is about a quarter of a millimetre, far below what print and a phone camera can resolve between them. For every square to get the width it needs, that code wants roughly 45mm including its border. On a 55mm-tall card, that is most of the card.
This is the answer to the question this page exists for. When a business card code will not scan, it is nearly always a vCard, and no amount of fiddling with the artwork fixes it, because the problem is the payload.
The contact-card trade-off
There are two honest ways to put your details behind a code, and neither is simply better.
A static vCard baked into the pattern. The phone opens its add-contact screen with no network involved, in a basement conference room or on a plane. It depends on nobody: no account, no subscription, no company that has to still exist. The costs are the 45mm above, and permanence in the wrong place. The day the mobile number or job title changes, every card in every wallet is wrong, and nothing can change a static code after printing.
A dynamic link to a contact page. The pattern holds a short redirect, so 15 to 20mm is enough, and the page behind it can be corrected years after the box of five hundred was printed. The costs are a signal at scan time and a dependency: the link has to keep resolving for as long as the cards exist, and cards live in desk drawers for a decade. That makes the provider’s cancellation behaviour part of the decision, which is why ours keeps resolving after a subscription ends. A card needs one code, and the free plan includes three.
If your details will genuinely never change and the layout can give the code 45mm, the vCard is sound engineering and nobody should sell you a subscription for it. If the details might change, and on a card they usually do, the small dynamic code wins.
Textured and coloured stock
Business cards are where designers reach for interesting paper, and interesting paper is hostile territory for a pattern that lives or dies on the crispness of half-millimetre squares.
- Uncoated, laid and linen stocks let ink spread as it dries, fattening every module, and the surface texture scatters light back at the camera. Go 2 to 3mm above whatever minimum you were planning, and do not put a dense grid on textured stock at all.
- Kraft and tinted stocks cut contrast. Black on kraft brown usually reads; a brand-colour code on a tinted card is where it quietly stops. The scanner wants dark on light at a ratio of about 4:1, and a light code on a dark card is inverted, which some phones refuse outright.
- Foil, spot UV and gloss laminate throw reflections straight back at the lens. A foiled code is a beautiful object that scans at some angles. Matt laminate is the safe finish.
- Letterpress and deboss press the edges of each square out of shape, which matters more the smaller the squares are. At card sizes, keep the code flat-printed even if the rest of the card is pressed.
Before ordering five hundred
Get one card proofed at final size on the chosen stock, and scan it with a phone that is not yours, in dim light, from a hand that is not steadying itself on a desk. That is the scan your card has to survive at the end of an event, and it is cheaper to fail at the proof stage than in a box of five hundred. The wider print checks, and what to send the printer, are covered in the print guide and the file formats guide.
We make QR codes you can re-point after they are printed. The pattern on the page never changes, and the codes you have already printed keep working even if you stop paying.
Three codes free, no card. Paid plans start at £3.49 a month including VAT.