Glossary → Safe area
Safe area.
the inner margin where text and faces survive the cut, the seam and the wrap
The zone inside the trim line, or on a garment inside the print template's edge, usually drawn as a dashed or dotted line, where anything that must not be lost belongs: text, faces, logos, signatures. Gelato starts it at least 4 mm inside the trim line on print-ready PDFs. A DTG shirt has no blade, and Printful's dotted line is there for small shifts during printing. On sublimated and all-over products the margin has to absorb placement as well as the blade: Printify says elements may move by up to 0.5 in in most cases from order to order, and Printful allows a shift of up to 2 inches in any direction on sublimation. Sellers treat the dashed line as a suggestion and push a name or a slogan to the template edge, because the mockup shows it whole. Then the cut, the seam or the wrap takes the last letter, and the complaint is about a print that matches the file exactly.
Where this matters: DTG printing › Bleed and safe zone · DTF › Bleed and safe zone · Sublimation › Bleed and safe zone · Wall decor › Bleed and safe zone · Screen printing › Bleed and safe zone · UV printing › Bleed, wrap and safe zone · KDP spine width, bleed and cover size › Bleed and safe zone: KDP and other book printers · Stickers › Sticker bleed size: bleed, border and safe zone · Mug and tumbler template sizes, DPI and seam › Bleed and safe zone · All-over print › Bleed and safe zone