Poster printing in Walthamstow, A3 from £4

The most common mistake we see is not a file problem. It is ordering the wrong size, usually too small, because A sizes are hard to picture.

A3 (297 x 420mm) is about the size of two sheets of A4 side by side. It is right for a shop window, a noticeboard, a cafe wall or a gig poster. At £4 for one and £2 each from ten, it is also the cheapest way to test a design before committing.

A2 (420 x 594mm) is the smallest size that reads properly from across a room. Good for event signage, exhibition boards and anything a few metres away.

A1 (594 x 841mm) is the standard for seating plans, presentations and anything read by a queue of people. It is also our most popular size for wedding seating plans, mounted on foam board.

A0 (841 x 1189mm) is a proper large format poster for trade stands, shopfronts and academic posters. At £40 it is less than most people expect.

Our poster sizes guide lays the measurements out visually if you want to compare before ordering.

This is the question worth asking before you order, and it is the one we answer free on every poster.

Viewing distance does a lot of forgiving. For something read close up you want plenty of resolution, but for a poster seen from two metres away considerably less is genuinely fine, and at A0 on a wall nobody has their nose against it. What we do is check your actual file against your actual print size and tell you the largest size it holds at.

In practice that means the following. A phone photo usually prints cleanly at A2 and is acceptable at A1. A Canva design exports at a fixed size, so if you built it as an A4 and print it at A1 it has been enlarged four times over: build it at the final size in Canva, or send us the file and we will tell you what it will stand. Our Canva printing guide covers the right export settings. An AI generated image is often about 1024 pixels square, which is fine up to roughly A4 and struggles beyond it, and while we can upscale, upscaling invents detail rather than recovering it. A scan of original artwork is the best source there is, and we scan up to A0 at £6 a scan.

Send us whatever you have. The file check is free, and we would rather talk you down to A2 than sell you an A1 you are unhappy with.

Prints come to you flat rather than rolled wherever the size allows, which makes them far easier to mount, frame or work with. If you would prefer them rolled in a tube for transport, just say so when you order.