A quarter inch that buys half a face again
1.25 inch custom buttons
Price and dimensions
The 1.25 inch face, with its safe area marked. The disc is drawn to the same scale on every size page.
$1.69
per 1.25 inch button, with no order minimum. One button is a valid order.
Price per button, by how many 1.25 inch buttons you order
- 1 to 99
- $1.69
- 100 to 249 (20% off)
- $1.35
- 250 to 499 (25% off)
- $1.27
- 500 to 999 (30% off)
- $1.18
- 1,000 and up
- By quote
Discounts are counted per size, never across sizes. 50 of one size plus 50 of another is 100 buttons and earns nothing, because neither size reached 100. 50 plus 50 of the SAME size in two different designs is 100 of that size, and both lines get 20% off. So several 1.25 inch designs in one order add up toward the same discount, and 1 inch buttons in the same cart do not.
- Finished diameter
- 1.25 inches
- Safe area for artworkconservative guide, not yet measured
- 1.094 inches
- Artwork printed and cut at
- 1.73 inches
- Face at 300 DPI
- 375 pixels
- Full file at 300 DPI
- 519 pixels square
- Print area
- 1.56x the 1 inch
The safe area for this size is a conservative guide, not a measurement: its tooling has not been put on calipers yet, so this figure is deliberately tighter than the real safe circle is likely to be. Keep anything that has to stay readable inside it and you are safe either way.
Is 1.25 inch the right size for you?
It suits
- A mark plus one short word, which is the layout the 1 inch face cannot quite hold. This is the smallest diameter where a symbol and a word stop fighting each other.
- A logo that has a thin element in it. The extra 1.56x of face is usually enough to keep a keyline or a thin counter from closing up.
- Anything worn in quantity where you want it a little more visible than a 1 inch pin but still unobtrusive: a volunteer marker, a membership pin, a tiered recognition set.
- A two-tier set with the 1 inch. The size difference is immediately obvious in the hand, so one size can mean one thing and the other another without any text explaining which.
- Lapels and cap fronts, where the 2.25 inch disc starts to look like a statement rather than a detail.
We would send you elsewhere for
- Artwork that already works at 1 inch. If nothing on the design needed the extra room, the extra $0.20 per button is buying you nothing you asked for.
- Anything where the safe area has to be a measured number rather than a conservative guide. The 1.5 inch size is only $0.20 more per button and its safe circle has been in production use for years. See the artwork section below: we would rather lose the sale than have you find that out afterwards.
- More than one word, a tagline, or a name somebody has to read across a counter. That is 2.25 inch territory and it is not close.
- Photographs, QR codes and anything with fine detail. The face is still smallenough that every one of those struggles.
A quarter inch, priced in both directions
Coming up from 1 inch costs $0.20 more per button, which is $20.00 across 100 buttons, and it buys 1.56 times the print area. Carrying on up to 1.5 inch costs another $0.20 per button, or $20.00 across 100, for 1.44 times this face.
Put those side by side and the honest conclusion is that the two steps cost almost the same and the second one buys slightly less area. What the second one also buys is a measured safe circle, which is the thing actually worth weighing here rather than the area.
Both comparisons are at the regular rate. The volume ladder applies to whichever size you order, counted on that size alone, so the gap between neighbours narrows proportionally as the quantity rises rather than reversing. There is no quantity at which a larger button becomes cheaper than a smaller one.
Read about 1 inchRead about 1.5 inchSee all five at true scale
Artwork for a 1.25 inch button
Inside the safe circle
Crossing the safe circle
Make your file 1.73 inches square for a 1.25 inch button. That is 38 percent larger than the finished face, which is far more than the 20 percent the general print advice suggests, and it is the second widest ring in our catalog after the 1 inch. The ring is not waste: it folds over the metal shell and crimps underneath, so it carries background and nothing you need to see.
The safe area on this size is a guide, not a measurement
The 1.094 inch safe circle in the figure above is a conservative guide. This size runs on a newer automatic press and nobody here has put calipers on its die yet, so unlike the 1.5 inch and 2.25 inch sizes we do not have a measured safe diameter to publish for it.
Where the number comes from, so you can judge it rather than take it: it is the tightest safe-to-face ratio recorded anywhere in our production notes, applied to this face. Every safe area we have ever measured is more generous than that ratio, so the circle shown is at least as tight as the real one is likely to be. Design inside it and you are safe whichever way the measurement lands.
If your artwork has an element that absolutely must survive and sits close to the edge, there are two good moves. Pull it further in than the ring suggests, or step up to 1.5 inch, which costs $0.20 more per button and whose 1.375 inch safe circle is a figure that has been producing buttons for years. We would rather point you at the second option than have you find this paragraph after a run.
When the die is measured we will publish the real number here. If it is more generous than this guide, which we expect, that is a constraint lifting rather than a correction.