How do I design a book or booklet in Canva and get it print ready?
Written by Mike HeatonOctober 202618 min readScreenshots from the free Canva plan
We're Ex Why Zed, a book and booklet printer in Colchester, and every week a box leaves our studio holding a book that started life in Canva. Some of those files arrived perfect. Plenty arrived as a PNG, as side by side spreads, or with the title sitting right on the trim line. This page is the full walkthrough we wish we could hand every author who opens Canva for the first time: every menu, every number, every setting, for a stapled booklet, a perfect bound book and a hardback.
In one breath
Canva can make a book we can print. Build every page at its trimmed size, in millimetres, switch on Show print bleed and let your colour spill past the trim line, keep words 8mm in with a set of guides, then download as a PDF on the Print preset with Crop marks and bleed switched on. Send us that PDF and we go through it by hand, free, before anything reaches the press.
Pick your binding below and we'll show you exactly what to build. The five settings that apply to every binding follow underneath.
Choose your binding
Pick your binding and we'll tell you what to build
The page settings are the same for all three. What changes is how many Canva designs you make, what goes in them, and how much room the spine steals. Never set up a page for print before? Skim the five settings first, then come back and pick a tab.
Page countDivides by four8, 12, 16 and onwards to 72
One design, every page in reading order
A stapled booklet (we also call it wire stitched or saddle stitched) is the least fiddly of the three. There's no separate cover file and no spine to calculate. Make one Canva design, sized as the finished booklet will be, and put every page in it, in the sequence a reader meets them: page 1 is the front cover, page 2 is the inside front cover, then your inside pages, then the inside back cover, and the very last page is the back cover.
Don't build the cover as one wide back and front page. Our press software takes single pages and pairs them into printer's spreads itself, so a double width page confuses it. The same goes for the inside: design every page separately, even the ones that face each other.
Click Pages at the bottom of the editor to see your running order. Page 1 is the outside front cover and your final page is the outside back cover.
Count your pages in fours
Every folded sheet makes four pages, which is why the total, cover counted, needs to divide by four. Landed on 30? Drop to 28 or stretch to 32. A blank page before the first chapter, a dedication, a page of thanks or a notes page at the back all solve it without padding the content. Canva shows the count in the bottom corner next to Pages, so check it before you download.
Beyond 40 pages or so a stapled booklet refuses to lie flat, and small formats with a stiff 350gsm cover bounce the most. From 32 pages upwards you can perfect bind instead, so if you're heading for a thick booklet, flick to that tab and compare.
A photo across two pages works here
Stapled booklets open completely flat, so a picture that runs from a left page onto the right page lines up beautifully. Design it as two separate pages: crop the left half of the photo onto one page and the right half onto the next, each spilling past the trim line into the bleed. Keep any words off the fold itself.
Send us one PDF
One Canva design, one download: PDF, Print preset, Crop marks and bleed on, Flatten off.
Pages in reading order, front cover first, back cover last, total divisible by four.
Words and page numbers kept within the 8mm guides. Thick booklets: pull page numbers in a touch further, because the centre pages creep outwards and get trimmed a fraction narrower.
Email it to hello@exwhyzed.com with your paper choices, quantity and delivery address. Over 10MB? Use WeTransfer or a Google Drive or Dropbox link.
Prices, paper and page counts for this binding live on the booklet printing product page. Already exported spreads by mistake? Drop the file into the free Spread Splitter and download single pages with the bleed intact.
Canva designsTwoInside pages, plus a cover spread
Inside page sizeTrimmed size148 × 210 for A5; the bleed comes from Canva
Cover spread sizeW + spine + W, by HA5 with a 3mm spine is 299 × 210mm
Two designs: inside pages, then a cover
Perfect binding glues your pages into a wraparound card cover with a squared off spine that takes a title, which is why it needs two files. The first Canva design holds every inside page one at a time, in reading order, starting with the first right hand page you see when you open the cover. The second design is the cover laid flat: back cover on the left, spine down the middle, front cover on the right.
Finish the inside pages first. The spine width depends on how many pages you end up with and the paper you print them on, and every chapter you add after you've built the cover nudges the spine wider.
Your spine decides the cover width
Put your inside page count and paper into the spine size calculator on this site and it hands you the spine width plus the exact cover spread size. The maths is simple: cover width is the back cover width, plus the spine, plus the front cover width; cover height is your page height. An A5 book with 40 inside pages printed on 130gsm silk has a 3mm spine, so the cover design is 299 × 210mm. Type those numbers into Custom size and Canva's bleed takes care of the outer edges.
To mark the spine, go to File → Rulers and guides → Add guides → Custom and set 2 columns, Gap = your spine width, Margin 0. Two guides appear dead centre, exactly the spine apart. A spine under 5mm is too thin to carry a title safely, so leave it as plain colour; from 5mm up, keep the spine text small and centred between the two guides.
Two columns, gap equal to the spine. The back cover sits left of the guides, the front cover right. A photo running across the whole spread is fine, but keep faces and headlines 8mm off the spine guides, because the fold rounds a few millimetres into them.
Inside pages: 8mm from the spine, 12mm on the first and last
A perfect bound book never opens fully flat, so 3 to 4mm of every page disappears into the curve of the spine. Keep text, page numbers and anything you'd miss inside the 8mm guide box on every page; the spine side is where that 8mm earns its keep. The first and last inside pages are fixed to the cover by a hinge roughly 8mm wide, so on those two pages push everything 12mm away from the spine.
Which side is the spine? Odd numbered pages (1, 3, 5) are right hand pages, so their spine is on the left. Even numbered pages are left hand pages, with the spine on the right. The simplest way to stay safe in Canva is a guide box with an 8mm margin on every page, then one extra vertical guide dragged in from the ruler at 12mm on page 1 and on your final page.
A photograph that crosses from a left page to a right page loses a sliver in the gutter. Nudge the left half 2 to 3mm leftwards and the right half the same distance to the right, and the join reads cleanly. Never run small type across the fold on a perfect bound book: letters vanish and the sentence stops making sense.
What goes on page two of the cover file
If your inside front and inside back covers are printed (a colour, a pattern, a note from the author), add a second page to the cover design in Canva. Left to right it reads: inside front cover, spine allowance, inside back cover. Leave the middle strip and 10mm either side of it empty, because that's where we glue the pages in. Plain white inside covers? Keep the cover design to one page.
Send us two PDFs
Inside pages: one PDF of single pages in reading order, no covers in it, an even number of pages, 28 inside pages minimum (32 in total with the cover).
Cover: a one page PDF (two pages if the inside covers are printed), at back + spine + front width, from a separate Canva design.
Both downloaded as PDF, Print preset, Crop marks and bleed on, Flatten off.
Tell us how many inside pages there are and which paper, and we confirm the spine against the real files before anything prints.
Paper weights, cover laminations and prices are on our book printing page, and the perfect binding set up guide shows the same cover in InDesign if you ever switch software.
Canva designsTwo or fourInside pages, cover wrap, and endpapers if printed
Inside page sizeAs the finished bookA5 pages are 148 × 210mm
Cover wrap sizeWe send it to youA5 with a 9mm spine is 349 × 250mm
Ask us for the wrap size before you open Canva
A hardback cover is a printed sheet wrapped round thick boards, so it's a different animal from a softback cover: there are flaps that fold over the boards and get glued inside, a hinge each side of the spine, and a spine that's thicker than the perfect bound chart suggests because boards and endpapers thicken it. The one thing to do first is email us your page count, paper and finished size. We reply with the exact wrap size and spine width, and we proof every hardback back to you before it prints.
The formula, so you can see where the numbers come from: wrap width = 17 + page width + 5 + spine + 5 + page width + 17. Wrap height = 17 + 3 + page height + 3 + 17. For an A5 book whose spine is 9mm, that gives 17 + 148 + 5 + 9 + 5 + 148 + 17 = 349mm wide and 17 + 3 + 210 + 3 + 17 = 250mm high. The 17mm is the turn in that wraps the board, the 5mm flanking the spine is the hinge, and the 3mm top and bottom is where the board overhangs your pages.
The wrap: 17mm that nobody sees
Create the wrap as its own Canva design at the size we send you, then open File → Rulers and guides → Add guides, pick Custom and enter 2 columns, a gap of 5 + spine + 5, and a 17mm margin, plus 1 row with a 17mm margin. For the A5 example that's 2 columns, gap 19mm, margin 17mm. The rectangle inside the guides is the part of the cover people hold; the outer 17mm band folds round the boards and is glued down inside, so run your colour or photo all the way through it but keep every word, face and logo out of it. The 19mm gap in the middle is hinge, spine, hinge: a title sits in the central 9mm of it.
Margin 17mm, 2 columns, gap 19mm (for a 9mm spine). The band outside the guides disappears round the board. Our hardback cover guide PDF shows the same zones in green and purple if you'd like it beside you.
Endpapers are spreads, and one half is glued down
Endpapers are the heavier sheets that join your pages to the boards. Plain white ones need no file at all, so most authors send us two PDFs: inside pages and the wrap. If you'd like printed endpapers (a solid colour, a pattern, a map), you need two more small Canva designs, each twice your page width: 296 × 210mm for an A5 book, 420 × 297mm for A4.
The front endpaper design has two pages. Page 1 is the back of the sheet: keep its right hand half completely empty, because that half is stuck down inside the front board. Page 2 is the spread you see the moment you open the book. The back endpaper design is the mirror image: on page 1 keep the left half blank (that half is stuck to the back board), and page 2 is the final spread before the back cover closes. Our A5 endpaper template shows which half is which; scale the idea to your own size.
Inside pages: the same rules as a softback, plus one
Build the inside pages exactly as you would for a perfect bound book: one page per PDF page, in reading sequence, page 1 a right hand page, 8mm clear of the spine and 12mm clear on the first page and the last. The extra rule is the count: a hardback needs a minimum of 28 inside pages for the spine to reach a sturdy 9mm, and 36 or more sits better on the shelf. Canva holds up to 350 pages in one design; a longer book just means a second design and a second PDF.
Send us two or four PDFs
Inside pages: one PDF of single pages in reading order, even page count, 28 inside pages minimum.
Cover wrap: a one page PDF at the size we sent you, from its own Canva design.
Printed endpapers only: a front endpaper PDF and a back endpaper PDF, two spread pages each.
Every file: PDF, Print preset, Crop marks and bleed on, no flattening. Cloth and foil covers are set up differently, so ask us before you design one.
Board, cloth and lamination options are on the hardback book printing product page, and the long form hardback set up guide lists the running order of every sheet in the book.
And then we print it
Whichever tab you picked, the finished PDF has somewhere to go: stapled booklets, zines, perfect bound paperbacks and hardbacks, from a single copy upwards, UK tracked delivery included. If the budget decides your page count, get a price before you design a page.
The part everyone needs
Five Canva settings that decide whether it prints
Canva was built for screens, so its defaults quietly work against paper. These five settings flip it into a print tool. Do them in this order and the download at the end is a file we can put straight on the press.
Create a design at the finished size, in millimetres
On the Canva home page click Create a design (top right), then Custom size in the list on the left. Change the Units dropdown from px to mm before you type anything, then enter the width and height of your finished page: 148 and 210 for A5, 210 and 297 for A4, 210 and 210 for a square children's book. Click Create new design.
Type the finished size, not the finished size plus bleed. Canva adds its bleed outside the page in a later step, and if you add 6mm here as well the file comes out twice bled with the crop marks in the wrong place. Decide the size now, too: on the free plan Canva's Resize button is locked, so changing size later means starting a fresh design.
UK tip
Canva's ready made document sizes lean American: Letter is 216 × 279mm and no UK press runs on it. Over here a book is A5 (148 × 210mm), A4 (210 × 297mm) or a square 210 × 210mm, so type the millimetres yourself and keep Units on mm. Those three sizes also fit our presses with the least waste, which is why they're the cheapest to print.
Units first, then the numbers. If the Units box still says px you'll get a 148 pixel wide page, which is smaller than a postage stamp.
Switch on Show print bleed and fill to the outer edge
Inside the editor click File (top left), hover Rulers and guides and click Show print bleed. (Older accounts list it under File → Settings instead.) The page grows a thin strip all the way round and a thin inner line appears. That inner line is your trim line, where our guillotine cuts. The strip outside it is the bleed. We exported a test PDF and measured it: 3mm, exactly what we ask for.
Whatever meets the edge of a page, a photo, a block of colour, a pattern, has to run across the trim line to the solid outer edge. Drag the corner handles out until they snap to the outside, or select the element, click Position in the toolbar, open Advanced, unlock the ratio padlock and type the numbers: on an A5 page that's Width 154, Height 216, and X and Y both set to minus 3 (type the minus sign). Canva accepts negative positions and the picture lands exactly in the bleed.
File → Rulers and guides → Show print bleed. Switch it on once and Canva remembers it for your next design.Outer edge, inner line, purple guide. Colour runs to the outer edge, the cut lands on the inner line, and words stay inside the purple box. The page you set up stays 148 × 210mm; only the download grows.Position → Advanced for an exact fill. Unlock the padlock first or the height will drag the width with it.
Add guides so nothing wanders near the trim or the spine
Canva has a Show margins option, but its margin is fixed and wide. Guides give you a box at the distance we actually need. Go to File → Rulers and guides → Add guides, choose Custom, and set Columns 1, Gap 0, Margin 8mm, then the same three values for Rows, then click Add guides. You get a purple box 8mm inside the trim line, on whichever page you're viewing, and every page you add afterwards inherits it.
Everything you'd be upset to lose, titles, body text, page numbers, a face, a logo, stays inside the box. 8mm covers the 5mm we need at the trimmed edges and the 8mm we need on the spine side of a bound book in one go, so you never have to remember which edge is which. Guides are locked by default and never print.
Custom guides, 8mm margin. For the spine guides on a perfect bound cover or a hardback wrap, the binding tabs above give you the column and gap numbers.
Photos need 12 pixels per millimetre at the size you print them
Canva's download can be set to print quality, but it can't invent detail a photo doesn't have. A picture saved from a website or a WhatsApp chat is usually around 1,000 pixels wide, which prints sharp at postcard size and soft across a full page. Work out the pixels you need by multiplying the printed size in millimetres by 12 (that's the 300 pixels per inch printers quote, in UK sizes): a full A5 page with bleed needs roughly 1,850 × 2,600 pixels, a full A4 page about 2,600 × 3,600, and a half page photo on A5 around 1,850 × 1,300.
On a Mac, select the file and press Command + I to see its pixel size; on Windows, right click, Properties, Details. Upload originals straight from the camera or phone rather than copies that have been through a messaging app, and never stretch a small image to fill a page. If one slips through, our file check catches it and we'll ask for a bigger version before we print.
Download as PDF, Print preset, with Crop marks and bleed on
Click Share (top right) then Download. Canva suggests PNG, which is an image, not a print file, so change File type to PDF. Under Presets click Print. Leave the Colour profile on RGB unless you have Canva Pro (more on that below). Open Advanced Settings and switch Crop marks and bleed on. Leave Flatten PDF off, leave Include notes off, then click Download. Every page in the design lands in one PDF.
Five clicks, in this order. File type PDF, Print, Advanced Settings, Crop marks and bleed on, Download. Flatten PDF stays off. Tick Save download settings and Canva keeps them for next time.
Open the PDF before you send it. You should see short marks at every corner and your colour running past them. An A5 design downloads as a 160 × 222mm page, which looks alarming and is correct: 148 × 210 of book, 3mm of bleed and 3mm of white for the marks on every side. We cut where the marks point. If the page reads 148 × 210 instead, the switch was off and Canva has cropped the bleed away, so download it again.
What a correct download looks like. This is the test file we measured: trim box 148 × 210, bleed box 154 × 216, page 160 × 222.
Know before you commit
Three things Canva won't do for a book, and what to do instead
Canva was built for single pages, and three gaps catch authors out somewhere around page 20. None is fatal. All three are easier to plan for than to discover.
1 · Text
Words don't flow onto the next page
Paste a chapter into Canva and it lands in one text box that keeps growing off the bottom of the page rather than continuing on page 2. Every page is its own text box, filled by hand.
Instead: work a page at a time, body text at 10 to 11pt, box edges snapped to the purple guides. That suits a cookbook, a zine, a children's book or a photo book. A 200 page novel means 200 boxes, which is why we steer text heavy books towards Affinity (free) and keep Canva for picture led pages.
2 · Masters
No master pages
There's no single page that controls the rest, so a footer, a running title or a background colour added on page 40 has to be added on page 41 as well.
Instead: finish one page completely, guides, page number, anything that repeats, and duplicate it for every page in the book before you add the content. Changing the furniture later means visiting each page, so settle it first.
3 · Numbers
Page numbers exist, with two catches
Text → Dynamic text → Page numbers numbers every page in one click and keeps counting when you add or move pages.
The catches: Canva parks the number at the bottom right, half outside your 8mm box, and it uses the same spot on every page, so a right hand number sits in the gutter on every left hand page. Drag it to the foot of the page, centred, inside the guides, then click Apply properties to all pages.
Where Canva puts the number. Bottom right, on the guide line. A centred number along the bottom edge, inside the guides, is safe on left and right hand pages alike.
The setting people mix up
Two ways to do bleed in Canva. Pick one. Never both.
Older advice (including some of ours) said Canva had no bleed setting, so you should make the page 6mm bigger and let the edges fall where they fall. That still works. Canva's own bleed also works. Combining them is the single most common reason a Canva file comes back to us the wrong size.
Way one · what this page teaches
Finished size, Canva adds the bleed
Custom size = the finished page (148 × 210). Show print bleed on. Colour pulled out to the outer edge. Download with Crop marks and bleed on.
Result: for A5, a 160 × 222mm PDF page with crop marks showing us the 148 × 210 trim and 3mm of bleed inside the white border. Our preferred route, because the marks remove any doubt about where the cut goes.
Way two · the old route
Bigger page, bleed baked in
Custom size = finished page plus 6mm (154 × 216). Show print bleed off. Colour pulled to the page edge, words kept 11mm in from it (8mm inside the trim). Download with Crop marks and bleed off.
Result: a 154 × 216mm PDF with no marks. We trim 3mm in from each edge. Fine, as long as you tell us the finished size you want.
Don't do this
A 154 × 216mm page with Crop marks and bleed switched on downloads at 166 × 228mm, with crop marks sitting 3mm wide of your real trim. We'd have to guess which 3mm you meant, so we'll send it back and ask. If you followed the old advice and built at 154 × 216, you can carry on; just keep Crop marks and bleed off when you download.
Colour, black and type
RGB, CMYK and the black of your body text
Screens mix light (red, green and blue) and presses mix ink (cyan, magenta, yellow and black), so every file gets converted at some point. On Canva's free plan the Colour profile dropdown offers RGB only; CMYK carries a crown, which means Canva Pro. Don't let that stop you. Send us the RGB PDF and we convert it here as part of the free check, and we'll tell you if a colour is going to shift noticeably. Neon and very bright greens and oranges are the usual suspects, because no ink glows the way a screen does.
If you do have Pro and pick CMYK, that's welcome, with one watch out: Canva's conversion can turn black type into a blend of all four inks, which looks fractionally soft on small text. We look for it before anything prints and tell you if it needs changing. Whichever plan you're on, set body text to true black (#000000) rather than a dark grey or near black, and keep it at 9pt or bigger.
The crown means Pro. RGB is fine. We handle the conversion to ink.
Fonts travel inside the PDF unless you flatten it
A Print preset download embeds every font you used inside the PDF, so your type prints exactly as you set it, sharp at any size, with no font files to send us. The one way to break that is the Flatten PDF switch, which turns every page into a single picture. Flattening makes the file bigger, turns crisp text into pixels and takes away our ability to fix a stray black for you. Leave it off. The only time to flatten is if a transparency effect or a tricky font misbehaves in the PDF, and if that happens, tell us and we'll look at it together.
Outgrowing Canva?
Affinity, made by the same company, became free in October 2025 and handles bleed, CMYK and PDF/X exports the way a professional layout program does. Our InDesign and Affinity guides on the Artwork Hub cover the set up. For most self-published books, Canva done the way this page describes is all you need.
What comes back and why
Eight ways a Canva book goes wrong, and the fix for each
We see these every week. None of them is a disaster, because we check before we print, but each one costs you a day while we email back and forth.
1 · Format
It arrived as a PNG or JPG
Canva suggests PNG by default and it's easy to click through. An image has no crop marks, no embedded fonts and often no bleed. Fix: Share → Download → File type PDF → Print preset.
2 · Pages
Inside pages built as wide double pages
Our imposition software wants every page separate. Fix: design single pages, or feed your spreads PDF through our free Spread Splitter. The cover of a bound book is the one spread we do want.
3 · Bleed
White slivers down one edge
The background stopped at the trim line, so a hair of movement on the guillotine shows paper. Fix: Show print bleed on, every element that touches an edge dragged past the trim line, and Crop marks and bleed on when you download, or Canva crops the bleed off.
4 · Size
Double bleed
Page built at 154 × 216 and Crop marks and bleed ticked. Fix: one method or the other. Finished size with Canva's bleed is the route we recommend.
5 · Count
30 pages for a stapled booklet
Folded sheets come in fours. Fix: add a blank, a dedication or a notes page to reach 32, or drop to 28. Perfect bound books only need an even number.
6 · Gutter
Page numbers lost in the spine
Centred page numbers and text set tight to the inside edge vanish into the curve of a glued spine. Fix: the 8mm guide box, with 12mm at the hinge pages.
7 · Photos
Soft, blocky pictures
A screenshot or a web image stretched to a full page. Fix: upload the original photo and check the pixel count against the 12 per millimetre rule above.
8 · Cover
Cover built before the page count was final
Two more chapters, a wider spine, and the title no longer sits centred. Fix: finish the inside pages, run the spine calculator, and only then build the cover. Changed your mind? Tell us and we'll run the spine again.
Ready to print?
Your file is ready. Here's what happens next
The leg work is done. From here it's one email, one check and one delivery.
Download the PDF, or PDFs
Print preset, Crop marks and bleed ticked, Flatten off. Stapled booklet: one file. Perfect bound: two. Hardback: two, or four if the endpapers are printed. Open each one and look for the corner marks before you send it.
Send it with three details
Email hello@exwhyzed.com with your paper and binding choices, how many copies you'd like and the delivery address. Files over 10MB won't fit in an email, so drop it into our upload link instead, or send a WeTransfer.
A human check, then a price
Harriet or Mike looks at every file personally before it's accepted for print. We check the page size against the size you ordered, the bleed, the page order and count, the spine, the resolution of every image and the colour mode, then we either confirm it's good to go or send you a short list of what to change, normally within the working day, along with the price per copy.
Approve, then we print
Happy with the price? Pay, and your job joins the queue. Twenty copies or fewer of a booklet or paperback get a careful preflight and go straight into production; bigger runs, and all hardbacks, usually see a PDF proof before any paper moves. Typical timings from approval: 3 days for a stapled booklet, 5 for perfect binding, 7 for a hardback, with tracked UK delivery already in the price.
Unsure? Start with a single copy
We have no minimum, so order one, hold it, check the spine and the colours against your screen, then go to press with the full quantity.
The phone is answered on weekdays between 9am and 5pm, on 01206 694689. If a screen share would be easier than explaining, we'll gladly open Zoom and look through your Canva design with you.
Still wondering
How to print from Canva: the questions people ask us
How do I print a Canva project?
Three moves. Set the page to its real size, in mm, turn Show print bleed on, then export a PDF (Print preset, Crop marks and bleed ticked). That PDF is what a printer needs, and the five settings above walk through each click. Sending it to us? Tell us the paper, how many and where to, and we take it from there.
How do I print from Canva at home?
Choose PDF, pick Print, leave Crop marks and bleed off, then open the download in Preview or Acrobat and print at 100%, never "fit to page", on A4. Home printers can't reach the edge of the sheet, so expect a white border, or print on A4 and trim down to A5 with a guillotine. For anything bound, a booklet or a book, a home printer runs out of road, and the rest of this page is the other route.
Canva PDF Print vs PDF Standard: which one do I want?
Print, every time it's going on paper. The Print preset keeps images at print resolution, skips the heavy compression and unlocks the Crop marks and bleed switch; Standard (now called Digital in Canva's download panel) squeezes everything to 96 pixels per inch for screens, which prints soft. The Print file is bigger, and that's the point.
Is Canva's PDF Print really 300 dpi?
Up to 300, yes, but it can't add detail that isn't there. A photo that's 1,000 pixels across stays 1,000 pixels across, and spread over a full A5 page that's under 7 per millimetre, which prints soft. The fix is the original photo at full size, not a different export setting; step four above has the numbers.
What size is A4 in Canva?
210 × 297mm, typed into Custom size with Units set to mm. If Canva insists on pixels, A4 at 300 pixels per inch is 2,480 × 3,508 and A5 is 1,748 × 2,480. With Show print bleed on, the A4 download becomes 216 × 303mm plus a white band for the marks, and we trim it back to 210 × 297.
Does Canva add the bleed inside the page or outside it?
Outside. We exported a test A5 design and measured the PDF: the trim box is 148 × 210mm, the bleed box is 154 × 216mm (3mm on each side) and the page itself is 160 × 222mm to leave room for the crop marks. Inside Canva the design stays 148 × 210mm throughout. So set your Custom size to the finished size and let Canva handle the extra.
My PDF says 160 × 222mm but I ordered A5. Have I done something wrong?
No, that's the right file. Preview and Acrobat report the whole page, and Canva's page is the 148 × 210 trim plus 3mm of bleed plus a 3mm white margin for the crop marks on each side. We cut on the marks and the white band goes in the recycling. A PDF that reads 148 × 210 is the one to worry about: Crop marks and bleed was off, the bleed has been cropped away, and it needs downloading again.
Where is Show print bleed? My File menu looks different.
Canva moves things around. Right now it's under File → Rulers and guides. On some accounts it's File → Settings, or File → View settings. It lives in the File menu somewhere, and once you've found it the trim line appears as a thin inner line on every page.
Can I design the whole book in one Canva design?
For a stapled booklet, yes: that's exactly what we want. For a perfect bound or hardback book, the inside pages go in one design and the cover goes in a second design at a different, wider size. A single Canva design can hold 350 pages.
My Canva design is in pixels. Can I still print it?
Only if it was made big enough. A pixel design has no physical size until it's printed, and most templates are sized for screens. The safest fix is a fresh design measured in millimetres at the size the book will be: copy your elements across, then upload any photos again at full resolution.
Should I use Canva's Print your design service instead?
Canva's own print service is handy for cards and flyers, but it offers a limited set of paper weights, finishes and bindings and you don't get a person checking the file. We print on 115 to 170gsm paper in silk, gloss or uncoated finishes, laminate covers, bind with staples, PUR glue or hard boards, and a person looks at every file before it's printed. Use Canva to design, and send the PDF to us.
Will my fonts print correctly?
Yes. Canva embeds the fonts in the PDF when you choose the Print preset and leave Flatten PDF off. Keep text as live text rather than converting it to an image and it prints crisp at any size.
I've already built everything at 154 × 216mm. Do I have to start again?
No. Keep Show print bleed off, keep your words 11mm in from the page edge (that's 8mm inside the trim), and when you download leave Crop marks and bleed off. Say in your email that the finished size is A5 and we trim 3mm from each edge.
Can you print a book I designed in Canva?
Yes, that's the whole point of this page. Stapled, perfect bound or hardback, one copy or a full run, printed here in Colchester and delivered tracked anywhere in the UK. Send the PDF with your paper choice, quantity and address, and a price comes back with the file check.
Your Canva book, checked by Ex Why Zed before it prints
Send the PDF, however unsure you are about it. We'll confirm the size, bleed, spine and page order, flag anything that needs a tweak, and tell you the price for one copy or a thousand.
PaperbacksA5, 44 pages, perfect bound£246for 100
Product cataloguesA5, 28 pages, stapled£166for 100
