Start by folding one
Whichever route you take, make a paper one first. Type your measurements above, print it on ordinary paper, and fold it. Five minutes and one sheet will tell you things no drawing on a screen will: whether your product actually fits, whether the lid is too tight, whether the box is taller than it needs to be. Every mistake caught here is free.
1. Print them yourself
Best for 1 to 50 boxes, gifts, samples, market stalls and small Etsy orders.
Download the PDF, print at 100 per cent on card, cut, score and fold. An ordinary inkjet or laser printer takes card up to roughly 250 gsm, and many will manage 300 gsm through the rear or manual tray — feed it one sheet at a time and it usually behaves.
Bigger than your paper? Tick Split across several sheets in the Page panel. The template is spread over as many sheets as it needs, each one overlapping its neighbour, with matching letters and registration crosses so you know which piece goes where. Trim to the dashed line and tape them together.
2. A local print or copy shop
Best for 20 to 500 boxes, and for anything bigger than A4.
This is the route most people skip and it is often the right one. A high-street copy shop or a small digital press can print A3 or SRA3, on board far heavier than your printer will take, for a few times the price of doing it at home — and many have a creasing machine, which gives folds no hand-scored line can match.
What to hand them:
- The PDF, exactly as downloaded.
- The words "print at 100 per cent, no scaling, no fit to page". Say it even if it feels obvious. Scaling is the single most common way a box comes back wrong.
- The card weight you want — 250 to 350 gsm suits most boxes.
- Ask whether they can crease along the fold lines. If they can, it is worth the extra.
3. An online packaging printer
Best for hundreds or thousands, and for anything that has to look bought rather than made.
These are real factories: proper die-cutting, glued seams, corrugated or rigid board, matt lamination, spot gloss, the lot. They also have minimum orders, usually in the hundreds, and lead times measured in weeks.
One thing to understand before you email anyone: they will almost certainly want you to design into their dieline, not yours, because their outline matches a physical cutting die they already own. That does not make this template useless — it makes it the cheapest way to work out what to ask them for. Fold a real one, settle on the measurements, then send those measurements out for quotes. You will get better prices asking for a specific box than asking "how much for a box?".
Which board to ask for
- Printer paper, about 80 gsm
- Prototypes only. It folds beautifully and holds nothing.
- Thin card, 160–200 gsm
- Small favour boxes, envelopes, sleeves, anything under about 8 cm.
- Card, 250–300 gsm
- The everyday packaging weight. Soap, candles, cosmetics, small retail cartons. This is what most shop boxes are.
- Board, 350–400 gsm
- Gift boxes, anything with weight in it, anything that must not flex. Score it properly or it cracks.
- Corrugated, 3 mm and up
- Shipping and mailer boxes. Enter the real thickness above — at 3 mm the flaps and tucks change size noticeably, and a template drawn for card will not fold.
Getting the artwork right
- Bleed 3 mm. Run colour past every cut line so trimming never exposes white card.
- Stay 5 mm clear of folds with text and logos.
- Leave the glue tabs bare. They end up inside the box, and glue grips unprinted card better.
- CMYK, not RGB, for a commercial press — the bright screen blues and oranges are the ones that shift most.
- 300 dpi images. The PNG here exports at 300 dpi for exactly this reason.
Questions
- Can I print custom boxes at home?
- Yes, and for small numbers it is the cheapest and fastest way. A home printer handles card up to roughly 250 to 300 gsm and paper up to A4 or Letter. Above that size, tick "Split across several sheets" and tape the sheets together.
- What file does a printer want?
- A PDF. It carries the exact page size, the lines stay vector sharp and nothing shifts between your screen and their press. Say "print at 100 per cent, no scaling" when you send it.
- What is the minimum order for real custom boxes?
- Online packaging printers usually start somewhere in the hundreds, and some go lower for digital printing. That is why it is worth folding a paper prototype from a free template first — a mistake found on your desk costs nothing.
- Do I need bleed?
- For home printing, no. For a commercial printer, yes: run your artwork about 3 mm past every cut line so no white edge appears when the job is trimmed or die-cut.
- Will a packaging printer accept this template?
- Use it to prototype and to price the job, not usually as the production dieline. Most factories cut on their own dies and will send you their own outline to design into. The measurements you settle on here are what you give them.
Next
Designing the box in Canva · Cutting it on a Cricut or Silhouette · All 21 box templates