Why do you need bleed?

A wall out of square requires BLEED to make it fit.

Besides errors in drawings and errors in measurements, the biggest reason to include enough bleed in a wallcovering or wallpaper mural is the plumb of the walls.  A plumb line is a metal bobber on the end of a string.  If you were to hold the end of the string in the top left corner of the target wall, and the bobber at the bottom of the target wall is 3″ in from the edge- your wall is 3″ out of plumb.  This can happen on ANY edge of the wall, so we need to compensate for it.  Bleed is necessary to cover these discrepancies.

What I am getting at here, is that sometimes square walls aren’t square, and rectangular walls aren’t rectangular.  The bottom of a flat wall might be longer than the top, or the right taller than the left.

So How much Bleed is necessary?

Below is a short list of maximum wall dimensions compared to a suggested amount of bleed to be added to EACH edge of the design to be printed.

• <8′ ……….1″ each side
• <20′ …2″-3″ each side
• <50′ …5″-6″ each side
• <100′ ….12″ each side

Articles Bleed, chart

What can you get a way with?  –Often times that’s the question in regards to large format graphics -with wall sizes that can be 100′+ long x 40′ tall,  what’s the minimum resolution that an image needs to be in order to satisfy the human eye?  Below is my take on resolution and minimum viewing distance:

15 dpi: 25 feet
25 dpi: 20 feet
50 dpi: 06 feet
75 dpi: 04 feet
100 dpi: 03 feet
300 dpi+: 1 foot

Articles chart, dpi, resolution, viewing distance