The smallest size we make
1 inch custom buttons
Price and dimensions
The 1 inch face, with its safe area marked. The disc is drawn to the same scale on every size page.
$1.49
per 1 inch button, with no order minimum. One button is a valid order.
Price per button, by how many 1 inch buttons you order
- 1 to 99
- $1.49
- 100 to 249 (20% off)
- $1.19
- 250 to 499 (25% off)
- $1.12
- 500 to 999 (30% off)
- $1.04
- 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 inch designs in one order add up toward the same discount, and 1.25 inch buttons in the same cart do not.
- Finished diameter
- 1 inches
- Safe area for artworkconservative guide, not yet measured
- 0.875 inches
- Artwork printed and cut at
- 1.38 inches
- Face at 300 DPI
- 300 pixels
- Full file at 300 DPI
- 414 pixels square
- Print area
- the smallest we make
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 inch the right size for you?
It suits
- One mark and nothing else: a symbol, a monogram, an icon, a single letter, a number.
- A band, a zine, a label or a show. This is the traditional diameter for a pin somebody puts on a jacket alongside eight others, and at this size a collection reads as a collection rather than as clutter.
- Handing out a lot of them. At $1.04 each once you reach 500 to 999 of this size, a few hundred is a line item rather than a decision.
- A flat colour and a shape. Solid blocks of colour survive this diameter better than anything else, which is why so many good 1 inch buttons are two colours and no text.
- Somewhere a bigger disc physically will not sit: a cap, a collar point, a strap, a lanyard clip, the edge of a bag.
- A set of designs. Quantities of one size add up across designs, so splitting a run of 1 inch buttons over six artworks is priced exactly as one run of 1 inch buttons rather than as six small orders.
Pick a larger size instead for
- Any text you expect somebody to read. One short word is the ceiling here, and even that wants to be set heavy.
- A logo with a tagline, a registered mark or a second line. On this face those come off, and a logo stripped back that far often stops being the logo.
- A name badge. A first name at a readable weight needs the 2.25 inch face at minimum.
- Any photograph. A face at this diameter is a few dozen pixels across the head, and the 3 inch disc carries 9 times the print area.
- A QR code. It will physically fit and it will not reliably scan: a code needs module size and a quiet margin, and a curved surface takes some of both.
The test that settles it takes a minute. Set your design to 1 inch wide on screen with the zoom at 100 percent, then hold your thumb next to it. A US quarter is not far off this diameter. Anything you have to lean in to read on a monitor is unreadable on a jacket at walking distance.
What the next size up actually costs
Stepping up from 1 inch to 1.25 inch costs $0.20 more per button, which is $20.00 across 100 buttons, and it buys 1.56 times the print area. A quarter of an inch sounds like nothing and it is more than half as much face again, which is usually the difference between a mark that fits and a mark plus a word.
Going to 2.25 inch, the ordinary badge diameter, costs $0.50 more per button, or $50.00 across 100, for 5.06 times the area. That is the step that turns a symbol into a symbol plus a line of text.
Both comparisons are at the regular rate, and both hold at every rung of the volume ladder: the discount applies to whichever size you actually order, counted on that size alone, so choosing a size and choosing a quantity stay two separate decisions.
Read about 1.25 inchRead about 2.25 inchSee all five at true scale
Artwork for a 1 inch button
Inside the safe circle
Crossing the safe circle
Your file is 1.38 inches square for a 1 inch button. That is 38 percent bigger than the finished face, and it is the widest ring in our catalog by a long way: at 3 inch the same figure is 15 percent. The standard advice you will find everywhere, add a quarter inch or make it 20 percent bigger, is nearly a factor of two short here. Follow it and the punch takes paper that was supposed to be the picture.
Set everything that has to survive well inside the middle. A one pixel stroke that looks crisp on a monitor can disappear entirely at this diameter, so thicken outlines, drop hairline keylines, and prefer two heavy colours to four subtle ones. If your mark has a thin outer ring, expect to lose it.
About the safe area on this size
The 0.875 inch safe circle shown above is a conservative guide rather than a measured figure, and we would rather say so than let you assume otherwise. This size runs on a newer automatic press, and nobody here has put calipers on its die yet. Our larger sizes run on tooling that has been in daily use for years, and the 2.25 inch die has been measured directly.
The number is not a guess in the loose sense. It is the tightest safe-to-face ratio recorded anywhere in our production notes, applied to this face, so it errs toward the middle of the button rather than toward the edge. Artwork that sits inside it is safe whichever way the measurement lands.
What this means in practice: treat the circle as a floor, not a target. If something absolutely has to survive, give it a little more room than the ring suggests. When the die is measured we will publish the real figure here, and if it turns out to be more generous than this, that is a constraint lifting rather than a correction.