What size bleed does a US Letter flyer need?

A standard US Letter flyer is printed with an 8.5 × 11 in trim size and needs a 0.125 in bleed on every edge, which makes the artwork board 8.75 × 11.25 in and keeps important text and logos inside an 8.25 × 10.75 in safe area.

The numbers

Trim: 8.5 × 11 in
Bleed box: 8.75 × 11.25 in
Safe area: 8.25 × 10.75 in
Page: 9 × 11.5 in

The bleed box adds the 0.125 in bleed to every edge of the trim, so 8.5 + 0.125 + 0.125 = 8.75 in wide and 11 + 0.125 + 0.125 = 11.25 in tall, giving an 8.75 × 11.25 in bleed box.
The safe area pulls the same 0.125 in in from every edge of the trim, so 8.5 − 0.125 − 0.125 = 8.25 in wide and 11 − 0.125 − 0.125 = 10.75 in tall, giving an 8.25 × 10.75 in safe area.
The page adds room for crop marks on top of the bleed, so 8.5 + 0.25 + 0.25 = 9 in wide and 11 + 0.25 + 0.25 = 11.5 in tall, giving a 9 × 11.5 in page.
Bleed is only added once per edge, so the 0.125 in bleed setting adds 0.25 in to the total width and 0.25 in to the total height, not 0.125 in.

The most common mistake is building the artwork at exactly 8.5 × 11 in with no bleed at all, so any background colour or image stops right at the trim line and a sliver of white paper shows up along one or two edges after the page is cut.

Crop marks sit outside the bleed box, which is why the full page ends up at 9 × 11.5 in even though the finished sheet is only 8.5 × 11 in.

Keep the safe area margin in mind for anything you do not want trimmed off, since cutting during production can shift by a fraction of an inch in either direction.

Preset

Unit

Trim width

Trim height

Bleed (per side)

Safety margin (per side)

Crop mark length

Crop mark offset from trim

Include guide outlines (screen only — set to not print)

Guides are placed in a PDF optional-content layer flagged not to print, so they stay visible on screen but are omitted when the file is printed.

Bleed8.75 × 11.25 in
Trim8.5 × 11 in
Safe area8.25 × 10.75 in

Box	in	pt
Bleed box (make artwork this big)	8.75 × 11.25 in	630 × 810 pt
Trim (final cut size)	8.5 × 11 in	612 × 792 pt
Safe area (keep text inside)	8.25 × 10.75 in	594 × 774 pt
PDF page (MediaBox)	9 × 11.5 in	648 × 828 pt

Trim: 8.5 × 11 in
Bleed box: 8.5 + 2 × 0.125 = 8.75 in wide, 11 + 2 × 0.125 = 11.25 in tall
Bleed is added here, and only here. Setting your document page size to the bleed box (8.75 × 11.25 in) and then adding bleed again in your design software double-counts it, leaving a white gap at the crop marks.
Safe area: 8.5 - 2 × 0.125 = 8.25 in wide, 11 - 2 × 0.125 = 10.75 in tall
Marks: 0.125 in long, offset 0.125 in from the trim edge
Page: 8.5 + 2 × 0.25 = 9 in wide, 11 + 2 × 0.25 = 11.5 in tall
The page (9 × 11.5 in) is larger than the bleed box (8.75 × 11.25 in) so it has room for the crop and registration marks; the artwork itself does not need to fill the page.

The generated PDF is a correctly sized blank canvas: a page with MediaBox, TrimBox, and BleedBox set to the dimensions you specify, plus crop marks showing where to cut. It does not contain any artwork.

Colour in the PDF is plain RGB or grayscale and is not colour-managed.

Confirm the bleed value with your printer before sending final artwork.