Eight cards on A4, with room to cut
Ten-up wastes nothing but punishes a printer that feeds a few millimetres off. This eight-up layout trades two cards for a 10 mm margin and a 5 mm gutter.
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When to give up two cards
Choose eight-up with an older printer, with lightweight stock that skews as it feeds, or whenever the design has bleed and you want to trim each card separately. The 5 mm gutter keeps the blade clear of the neighbouring card. Paper cost per card rises by a quarter, which is still far cheaper than reprinting a spoiled sheet.
What the 5 mm gutter buys you
Three millimetres of bleed from each side of the gutter still leaves a millimetre in the middle, so no card picks up its neighbour is artwork. Add the dashed guide and you simply cut down the centre of the channel with no measuring. Set the gutter back to 0 mm and the layout returns to ten up.
Why 10 mm of margin
A consumer inkjet keeps roughly 3 mm clear on each edge, and some models need close to 15 mm on the leading edge. Ten millimetres is inside the safe zone for almost every printer while still leaving room for four rows. If your printer clips the top edge, print the sheet twice with the paper rotated 180 degrees and use the good half of each.
Frequently asked questions
Should I use eight-up or ten-up?
Eight-up if the design bleeds off the edge, ten-up if it has a white border and you want the extra cards. When in doubt, run one eight-up test sheet and check that the outer cards are complete.
Can the gutter be 3 mm instead?
It can — the gutter accepts 0 to 40 mm in half-millimetre steps, and 3 mm still leaves four rows. But with 3 mm of bleed on each side the two cards would touch, so keep the gutter at 5 mm or more whenever bleed is on.
Do the dashed guides stay on the finished card?
The dashed outline sits on the trim line, so a slightly off cut leaves a fragment of it. If you want nothing on the card, choose corner trim marks instead — they are drawn outside the card and disappear when you cut.