Business Card Printing

The UK standard business card size is 85mm × 55mm, available with standard or rounded 3mm corners. We also print folded business cards at 110mm × 85mm or 170mm × 55mm. Add 3mm bleed to every edge of your artwork and keep important text 3mm inside the trim.

450gsm FSC® certified silk as standard, thicker than most printers’ premium option. A writable 350gsm uncoated stock is also available, and it’s the usual choice for loyalty and appointment cards because you can pen and stamp on it.

instantprint’s 450gsm silk measures roughly 0.5mm thick, about the same as two standard 250gsm papers stacked together. It’s rigid enough that the card doesn’t bend in a wallet, and it’s the weight most people describe as feeling expensive.

Silk is coated, so it has a slight sheen, sharper colour and a smooth surface. Uncoated is porous and slightly rough, so ink sinks in and colours look softer but you can write and stamp on it. Choose silk for impact, uncoated for anything that gets filled in by hand.

Yes, and most people do. Single sided and double sided are both options at every quantity; double sided costs a little more and takes no extra time. The back is a good place for a QR code, opening hours or a short list of services.

Premium 450gsm silk suits most businesses and is the default and add spot UV or foil when you want the card remembered by touch. Choose 350gsm uncoated if the card needs writing or stamping on. Order a free sample pack if you’d rather feel them first.

instantprint’s minimum order is 25 cards, with no set-up fee and no minimum spend, so a small run costs exactly what the price says (minus delivery). Most first orders are 100 or 250.

Contact details at networking events and meetings, appointment reminders, loyalty stamps, thank-you cards in parcels, discount codes at markets, and staff introductions. At 85mm × 55mm they fit a wallet or phone case, which is why they still outlast a phone number typed into a chat.

Square business cards have been discontinued, so if you’ve seen them mentioned anywhere that’s now out of date. We don’t currently offer custom sizes, die-cut or custom-corner shapes on any business card, and folded cards are only available at our standard 110mm × 85mm and 170mm × 55mm sizes. Our A6 and A7 cards are available under standard Business Cards, but not on the next-day product.

Yes to multiple designs — add each one as a separate basket item and we’ll print and dispatch them together. We don’t currently offer variable data printing (a different name or number on each card) or custom bundling into batches, so each design in a multi-design order is a single quantity and price.

Matt, gloss and velvet lamination, single or double sided raised spot UV, and gold or silver metallic foil. Velvet is the soft-touch one people keep stroking; spot UV and foil sit on top of a lamination.

Spot UV is a clear, high-build gloss varnish applied to chosen areas of your design — usually a logo or a pattern. It’s raised enough to feel with a fingertip and catches the light from an angle. It works best over matt or velvet lamination, where the contrast is strongest, and it isn’t available on rounded-corner or folded cards. Artwork needs a separate mask layer showing exactly where the varnish goes — use our free spot UV templates, or a Personal Artworker will set it up for you free.

A thin layer of real metallic foil is pressed onto specific parts of your card — usually a logo or name — in gold or silver, and it’s single sided only. Foil must sit at least 6mm from the edge of the card and cannot extend outside the safety area on our templates. To set up your own artwork, add a separate page in your PDF showing the foil area in solid black. We don’t offer a metallic ink option — foil is the way to get that finish.

Matt for photo-heavy designs and artificially lit rooms, where glare would spoil it — it resists scuffs and light spills but isn’t fully greaseproof. Gloss for bold colour and food or retail brands. Velvet for a soft-touch, premium feel. No lamination if the card needs to be written on.

Not currently. Embossing and debossing aren’t available — spot UV is the closest alternative if you want a raised, tactile effect. We don’t print on plastic or PVC business cards, and we don’t offer a linen-effect textured stock; 350gsm uncoated is the closest natural-feel option and still takes water-based ink and rubber stamps well.

Not reliably — ink sits on the surface and smudges. If the card gets written on, choose 350gsm uncoated with no lamination. Silk with no lamination takes ballpoint pen well.

We don’t offer a from-scratch design creation service, but we make it easy without one: use our free templates — there’s one built for most trades, and you can edit the text online and order in a few minutes. You can also design in Word, InDesign or Canva using our guides, or send your logo to a Personal Artworker who’ll clean it up for print at no charge.

Set your document to 85mm × 55mm, add 3mm bleed on every edge (so 91mm × 61mm total), keep text and logos 3mm inside the trim, use CMYK colour, make sure images are 300dpi, and save as a print-ready PDF. Then upload it through our proofing tool.

Bleed is 3mm of extra artwork past the edge of the card. Guillotines and punches move by fractions of a millimetre, so bleed guarantees your background runs right off the edge instead of leaving a white sliver. It’s the single most common reason artwork comes back to a customer.

A print-ready PDF is best. We also accept JPG, PNG, AI, EPS and INDD. Whatever you send, keep it CMYK at 300dpi with fonts embedded or outlined.

Before anything prints, instantprint’s Studio team check your file for resolution, bleed, safety margins, colour mode, embedded fonts, transparency, spot colour set-up, cut lines, and finish alignment. If something would spoil the print, we email you before we charge you. It’s free on every order.

Often, yes. AI Studio in your account upscales artwork up to 4× free while it’s in beta, and our Personal Artworkers can redraw or clean up a logo for print at no charge. Send us what you have and we’ll tell you honestly whether it will print sharp at 85mm × 55mm.

Yes. You get an online proof to approve after upload, and nothing goes to press until you approve it. The 5pm cut-off for next working day dispatch is based on approval time, not order time.

instantprint business cards start at £7.79 for 25 premium 450gsm silk cards excluding VAT. 100 cards start at £12.40 and 1,000 at £43.20. Lamination adds around 18%, velvet 34%, spot UV 42–68% and foil 78%. There is no set-up fee.

Yes — on instantprint’s price table, 25 cards work out at about 28p each and 1,000 work out at about 4p each. If you know you’ll reorder within the year, a bigger single run is almost always cheaper than two small ones — just don’t print details that are about to change.

instantprint’s prices are shown excluding VAT. VAT is added at the basket at the standard UK rate. Business cards are not zero-rated for VAT, unlike some leaflets.

Yes. Place an order and opt in to receive promotional marketing by email or post. We’ll then send you exclusive voucher codes and offers.

Approve your artwork by 5pm and instantprint dispatches your cards the next working day, delivered by DPD at a flat rate of £4.99 per order — so “1 working day” is dispatch time, and delivery itself takes a further working day on top. Spend over £75 and delivery is free. instantprint can deliver up to 2,000 cards next day, but we don’t currently offer Saturday delivery.

Yes, instantprint offers same-day printing on 450gsm silk business cards when you approve your proof by 5pm. Your cards will then be delivered the next working day. Spot UV and foil finishes take around two additional working days.

instantprint ships by DPD, in a rigid box that keeps the corners sharp. You get a one-hour delivery window and tracking by text or email on the morning of delivery.

Yes, the Scottish Highlands, Northern Ireland, the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands are all served, though transit can take an extra working day and some postcodes carry a surcharge shown at the basket. We don’t currently deliver to the Republic of Ireland, the UAE or the rest of Europe.

Uncoated and unlaminated silk cards are fully recyclable at kerbside. Laminated cards need to go to a specialist recycling stream. All our paper is FSC® certified, 98% of our waste output is recycled, and we’re working to Carbon Net Zero by 2035.

If the details are broadly right, keep them as backups and hand-correct them — nobody minds. If they’re out of date, recycle them; unlaminated cards go straight in the paper bin.

instantprint prints in Rotherham, South Yorkshire, at its 150,000 sq ft site on Manvers Way. Printing, finishing, artwork checks and customer service all sit under one roof — which is why instantprint can quote a next working day dispatch honestly.