2026-08-05
The expensive QR mistake is not design, it is printing 500 of something that scans fine on your monitor and badly on paper. Screens are backlit and perfectly sharp. Paper is neither. A short checklist prevents almost all of it.
The rule of thumb that holds up: the code should be about one tenth of the scanning distance. Reading distance 25 cm, code 2.5 cm. A poster scanned from a meter away needs a 10 cm code. When in doubt, go bigger; nobody has ever complained that a code scanned too easily.
The white margin around the code is structural, not decorative. Scanners use it to find the code's edges. Keep a margin of at least four modules (the small squares) clear on every side. The most common violation is a designer nudging the code against a colored background or a border box. If your generator bakes the quiet zone in, do not crop it off.
Dark code on light background, always. Inverted codes (light on dark) fail on a meaningful share of older phones. Colored codes are fine if the contrast stays strong; navy on white scans, yellow on white does not. If you add a logo in the middle, keep it under about a fifth of the code's area and use a generator that raises the error correction level to compensate.
The more characters you encode, the denser the grid and the more fragile the print. This is a quiet argument for dynamic codes: a short redirect link produces a sparse, robust pattern no matter how long the final destination URL is. Our menu codes, for instance, encode 26 characters regardless of where they point.
Print one proof at final size on the final stock. Then: scan it in bright light, in dim light, at an angle, with an Android and an iPhone, from a bit too far away. Thirty seconds of testing. If any scan hesitates, go up one size or ask the printer about dot gain on that stock. Only then approve the run.
You can generate a free code with EPS and PDF vector exports, which print sharp at any size. Vector files also make your print shop like you more.
Free, no account, editable after printing, and it will never expire on you.
Create a free QR codeMore guides: Restaurant menu QR codes that actually get scanned · How to see QR code scans in Google Analytics · Static vs dynamic QR codes, with real examples