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If you don’t want to deal with the expense of having business cards professionally printed, you may be interested in learning how to make business cards at home. While this method will take a little more work than using a professional printing service, your only real costs will be cardstock and ink. Learn more about the steps involved in making your own business cards to see if it’s a challenge you want to take on.

The first step in learning how to make business cards at home is arguably the most fun—coming up with how you want your card to look! Even if you’re not a creativity maven, you can use these tips to guide the process.

Whether you have a small business or you’re a solo entrepreneur, you likely have some kind of symbol or logo associated with your business dealings. Presenting this image on the card is a great way to create a brand identity.

Ideally, your logo shouldn’t be overly complicated. Something simple and memorable will be more effective than a colorful and intense graphic—and it will be easier for your home printer to render properly.

Your logo is an important part of your card, but what other information should you include? Here is a list of must-haves you’ll want to include, no matter your business or industry:

Once you have all of these necessities, there are a few additional items that might look good if you have the space:

In the United States, the standard business card size is 3.5 inches by 2 inches. This is likely what you’ll want to stick with for your at-home cards, as this will be the easiest size to find templates and paper for.

For a fun and lighthearted business, such as a bakery or pet walking service, choose brighter colors. For something more serious and professional, such as a law firm or accountant, go with dark and neutral colors. You’ll likely be printing on a white or cream business card, so avoid pale colors that would be hard to see.

As for the font, you’ll want something that’s easy to read and not too cramped. Avoid cursive scrawls, block letters or decorative fonts, as these can be hard to decipher at a quick glance. And try to use at least a 7-pt. font so everything is clear.

If you get stuck during this step, your best bet is to just rely on a premade palette or template from one of the design programs we discuss below.

If you’re designing your business cards at home, you probably aren’t at the level where you know how to use Adobe Photoshop or InDesign—and that’s perfectly fine! There are plenty of other design programs that take zero skill to use.

Canva is a popular design app offering thousands of premade templates for business cards. You can choose from millions of icons, images, fonts and illustrations to give your card more flair. If you do decide you want to go rogue and create your own design from scratch, Canva lets you do that as well.

Even though Word is primarily for written projects, it also comes loaded with business card templates you can play with. You can browse the available options on Office.com—and even find templates that are perfectly formatted to fit Avery business card paper.

Adobe Express is like Photoshop’s little sister—and best of all, it’s free. It comes loaded with thousands of templates to choose from, along with a ton of customization options. If you opt for the premium plan, you can insert branded elements automatically to make things faster.

Having premium paper for your business cards is crucial. The standard thickness of a business card is 14 pt. on the low end and 20 pt. on the high end. We recommend 14 pt., as it will probably work better with your at-home printer.

Because at-home printers likely can’t print on dark paper, you’ll also want to stick with lighter-toned paper, such as white.

The finish is also an important consideration. Glossy surfaces can look great with more colorful cards, but matte can look better if you have a more text-based variant.

Finally, you’ll also likely want to buy perforated business card sheets. That way, you can just pop out the cards after printing instead of cutting them. Without these, you’ll need a paper cutter to ensure a crisp, clean edge on your cards.

When printing your cards, the first thing you should do is make sure your printer is up to the task. Check the specifications to see the max paper weight your printer can handle. If your current printer won’t work, check out some of our picks for best printers for small businesses instead. It’s not on that list, but we also recommend the Canon PIXMA PRO-100, as it’s specifically intended for heavy cardstock.

Before printing, always do a test first. Print the design on normal paper to make sure your ink is working and the design looks good. Once you’re satisfied, you can then print one test card on cardstock. If you’re using perforated paper, make sure everything lines up correctly in the rectangle.

Finally, once that all looks good, you can print a full page. Avoid just printing multiple sheets of cards at once, since it’s very possible your ink could get low and lead to lower-quality prints. The thick cardstock paper could also clump together in the printer, causing a paper jam.

There are a few things to consider before choosing to print your business cards at home. First—do you have all of the equipment? If all you need to buy is some cardstock, that’s not a major expense. But if you need to buy a new printer or cutting board, then you’re likely going to spend way more than if you just had your cards professionally printed.

Overall, there are two main scenarios where printing your business cards at home makes the most sense. It’s a good idea if you’ve run out of your current business cards and just need a few quick replacements until you can order new ones. In this case, you can even use the layout from your original cards, cutting down on a lot of the design time.

Making your own business cards is also appropriate if you only need a small quality of cards, such as 25 to 50. For such a small amount, it often isn’t cost-effective to have them printed professionally.

For all other scenarios, it’s probably best to use a professional printing service. It can save you time, and you know you’ll get a quality result.

Printing your business cards at home takes a little work, but the results can be extremely rewarding if you put in the time and effort. As long as you use solid design principles, choose a template that works with your information and use quality paper and printing supplies, you should get cards that look nearly as professional as ones from a printing service.

To make your own business cards at home for free, use a free design app such as Canva to create your card, then print it on your own printer. You’ll just need to purchase quality cardstock to print on.

If you choose a heavier cardstock, such as 14 or 16 pt., a regular printer may not be able to handle paper that thick. For the best quality, we recommend using a printer that’s designed to handle heavy cardstock, such as the Canon PIXMA PRO-100.

Kristy Snyder is a professional writer and editor living in Pittsburgh with over 10 years of content creation experience. In addition to being a Content Editor for Clever Real Estate, she has contributed to numerous leading financial and tech websites, including Bankrate, The Simple Dollar, NextAdvisor, and more. Connect with her on LinkedIn to learn more about her work.

Kelly is an SMB Editor specializing in starting and marketing new ventures. Before joining the team, she was a Content Producer at Fit Small Business where she served as an editor and strategist covering small business marketing content. She is a former Google Tech Entrepreneur and she holds an MSc in International Marketing from Edinburgh Napier University. Additionally, she manages a column at Inc. Magazine.