How to Print From Canva Without a White Border (Step-by-Step Guide)

How to Print From Canva Without a White Border (Step-by-Step Guide)

You spent hours perfectly aligning your event flyer in Canva. The dark, moody background color stretches perfectly to the edges of your screen. You download the PDF, hit print on your home inkjet printer, and when the paper slides out of the tray, your heart sinks.

There is an ugly, uneven 1/4-inch white border framing your entire design.

This is arguably the single most common frustration users experience when moving from digital design to physical paper. Figuring out how to print from Canva without a white border requires understanding that the problem actually exists in two separate places: your Canva canvas settings, and your physical printer’s hardware limitations.

In this comprehensive guide, we are going to fix both issues so you can finally achieve that professional, edge-to-edge “full bleed” look.

Part 1: Fixing the File in Canva (The Print Bleed)

Before we touch your printer, we have to prepare the digital file correctly. In the professional printing world, printing all the way to the edge of a paper is called a “Bleed.”

Because paper shifts slightly as it moves through printing rollers, commercial printers cannot accurately print ink exactly on the absolute edge of a sheet. Instead, they print the design slightly larger than the final paper size on a bigger sheet of paper, and then use a massive guillotine blade to trim off the excess.

How to Add a Bleed in Canva

To ensure you don’t get a white line when the paper is cut, you have to stretch your background color slightly outside the final dimensions of your design.

1. Open your design in Canva.
2. In the top menu bar, click on File, then hover over View Settings.
3. Click on Show Print Bleed.

You will suddenly see a dashed line appear near the edge of your design, and your canvas will expand slightly outside that line. The area outside the dashed line is the Bleed Zone. This area will eventually be cut off.

Now, click on your background image or background color block and drag the handles so that the image stretches completely past the dashed line, all the way to the new outer edge of the canvas. Do not place any important text in this zone, or it will be chopped in half!

Exporting the Bleed

Now that your canvas is prepared, you must export it correctly.

1. Click Share > Download.
2. Select PDF Print (Never use JPG or PNG for printing documents).
3. CRITICAL STEP: Check the box that says “Crop marks and bleed.”
4. Click Download.

When you open your downloaded PDF, it will look a bit strange. There will be little crosshair marks in the corners. These are the cut lines telling the printer exactly where the final edge of the design should be.

Part 2: Fixing Your Home Printer (Hardware Margins)

If you send the file you just exported to a commercial print shop, they will print it perfectly without a white border. But if you are trying to print this at home, you have another hurdle to clear.

Most home inkjet and laser printers have an “unprintable margin.” This is a physical limitation. The printer has tiny plastic claws that grip the edges of the paper to pull it through the machine. The printer cannot spray ink where the claws are holding the paper, resulting in a mandatory 1/8-inch white border.

Enabling Borderless Printing

Many modern photo printers (especially Canon PIXMA and Epson EcoTank models) have a feature called “Borderless Printing” that uses a special sponge to catch overspray ink, allowing the machine to spray all the way to the edge.

Here is how to activate it:

1. Open your PDF Print file (preferably in Adobe Acrobat, not a web browser).
2. Click File > Print.
3. Do not just hit the print button! Click on Properties, Preferences, or Printer Setup (the name varies by operating system).
4. Look for a checkbox or dropdown menu labeled “Borderless Printing” or “Edge-to-Edge.” Check it.
5. Ensure your paper size is set exactly to the size of the paper in your tray (e.g., 8.5 x 11 Letter).
6. Under Page Sizing & Handling, select “Actual Size”. Do NOT select “Fit to Page” or the printer will shrink your design back down and bring the white border back.

What if My Printer Doesn’t Support Borderless Printing?

If you have an older or cheaper printer (especially budget laser printers), it simply might not have the hardware capability to print borderless. The “Borderless Printing” checkbox won’t exist in the preferences menu.

If you find yourself in this situation, you have two options to achieve a borderless design:

• The Trim Method: Print your design on a larger sheet of paper (e.g., print a 5×7 invitation on an 8.5×11 sheet). Make sure crop marks are turned on in Canva. Then, use a paper trimmer or a ruler and an X-Acto knife to manually slice along the crop marks, removing the unprintable white margins entirely.
• Use a Commercial Printer: If you are printing 100 wedding invitations, do not attempt to trim them by hand. Take the PDF Print file (with crop marks and bleeds) to a local print shop. Their massive machines will print it on oversized cardstock and use a hydraulic guillotine to cut all 100 invitations perfectly to the edge in one single chop.

Looking for more advanced Canva printing techniques? Check out our ultimate guide on The Ultimate Guide to Printing Canva Designs (2026 Edition).