Label sheet sizes in millimetres

A label sheet is defined by five numbers, not one: the size of a single label, how many fit across and down, the margin from the top-left corner of the page, and the pitch — the distance from the start of one label to the start of the next. Get the pitch wrong by half a millimetre and the last row on the page is visibly off. Below is every layout the app draws, with all five numbers.

The three families of label stock

Almost every label job falls into one of three shapes. A4 sheets are the European default and run from 21 labels a page (63.5 × 38.1 mm, the classic address label) down to 8 large shipping labels (99.1 × 67.7 mm) and up to 65 tiny barcode labels (38.1 × 21.2 mm). US Letter sheets are the American equivalent, built around 66.68 × 25.4 mm — thirty to a page, the shape most US address labels use. Rolls are a different animal: one label per feed, 100 × 150 mm for shipping, 100 × 50 mm and 50 × 25 mm for product and shelf labels, with no page margins at all because the printer feeds a continuous strip.

Pitch is the number people forget

Label width is not label pitch. On the 63.5 × 38.1 mm A4 sheet the labels are 63.5 mm wide but sit on a 66 mm pitch — there is a 2.5 mm gap between columns. Vertically the pitch equals the height, 38.1 mm, because the rows touch. Mixing these up is the single most common cause of a sheet that starts correctly and drifts off by the bottom row: an error of a fraction of a millimetre, multiplied by seven rows, becomes visible. The app takes both numbers from the table rather than deriving one from the other.

Rolls and the 4 × 6 inch shipping label

The 100 × 150 mm roll label is the global shipping standard and is usually sold as 4 × 6 inches (101.6 × 152.4 mm). The two are close but not identical, which is fine because thermal printers scale to the media they detect — what matters is that the artwork is drawn at the right aspect and has no page margin. Set the printer to actual size and select the label media, not A4. If your carrier gives you a ready-made PDF, print that one; use this tool for the labels you generate yourself.

Measure before a long run

The compatibility codes in the table let you find the right layout for a pack you already own, but manufacturers do revise stock, and different national editions of the same product are not always identical. Before committing 20 sheets, print one page on plain paper, hold it against the label sheet up to a window, and check that the printed rectangles sit inside the die-cut labels on all four edges. If they are consistently offset in one direction, the fix is the printer margin, not the template — see the misalignment article.