What home printing can and can't do
Avery 5371 is the standard home business-card sheet: ten 2 × 3.5 inch cards on a Letter page, micro-perforated so they snap apart without a cutter. It fits any home printer, and its siblings 5871, 8371, and 8871 are the same card in different finishes. You design a sheet, print it, and pop out ten cards.
Home-printed cards tend to look home-printed for a few specific reasons, and knowing them tells you what to fix. The perforated edges are slightly rough where the cards separate, not the clean guillotine cut of a printed card. The stock is thinner than the thick 14- to 16-point card a shop uses, so it feels flimsier in the hand. And a home printer can't run ink to the very edge, so a design with color to the border shows a thin white margin.
You can close most of that gap. Use a laser printer if you have one — laser toner is crisp and doesn't smear or bleed the way inkjet can on coated stock. Buy the heaviest Avery card sheet your printer will feed, and check the printer's spec for the maximum paper weight before you load it. Keep the design simple with a clean margin instead of edge-to-edge color, so the missing bleed never shows. Snap the cards apart gently and run a fingernail or a bone folder along the edge to flatten the perforation nibs.
A print shop or online printer is the better call when the cards represent you to strangers who will judge on feel — sales, a new business, anything where a flimsy card undercuts you — or when you want thick stock, rounded corners, a spot finish, or full-bleed color. Shops also get cheaper per card at quantity, so for 500 cards the price gap narrows. Home printing wins for a quick batch, an event, a side project, or a card you'll reprint often as details change.
Making the sheet with the free tool
The Business Card maker fills a full Avery 5371 sheet from your name, title, company, phone, email, and website. Choose a left-aligned or centered layout, add a logo, and pick a sans or serif typeface. The preview shows all ten cards; download and print.
Printing on the sheets
- Run a plain-paper test first.
Print one copy on plain paper, lay it over a blank Avery sheet, and hold both to a window. The printed cards should sit inside the perforations. Adjust only if they drift. - Print at 100% scale.
In the print dialog — the window that opens when you choose Print — set Scale to 100% or "Actual size" so the cards line up with the perforations. - Use the best-quality setting and let it dry.
Choose "Best" or "High" quality; on an inkjet, give the sheet a minute before handling so the ink sets. Then snap the cards apart.
Home vs print shop
- Print at home · small batches, events, side projects, details that change often, tight timeline.
- Use a shop · thick stock, rounded corners or special finishes, full-bleed color, high quantity, or a first impression that has to land.