Your graph paper PDF is wrong — fix it in one setting

Q: My bars read 96 mm, not 100 mm. What does that mean?

Your page was printed at 96% scale, so every square is 4% small. Fix the print scale to 100% / Actual Size and reprint.

Q: One bar is right but the other is wrong

Scaling shrinks both bars by the same ratio. Check the ruler unit: the upper bar is millimetres, the lower one inches.

Q: Does mobile printing work?

Phone print flows usually scale without asking. Print from a computer for anything you intend to measure.

Almost every "the squares aren't the right size" report is the same root cause: the print dialog shrank the page to fit the printer's margin. It scales everything down by roughly 4–6 %, silently, by default. Pick your symptom below — each fix is two clicks.

Verify first: every sheet on this site has two bars in the bottom margin. Lay a ruler on them — the upper bar must read 100 mm, the lower one 4 inches. If both are short by the same fraction, the page was scaled. That one check tells you which symptom you have.

Symptom by symptom

The squares come out smaller than they should be

Cause: the print dialog scaled the page to fit the hardware margin

Chrome / Edge

In the print dialog open More settings, find Scale, switch it from Default to Custom and type 100. Then check Paper size matches the paper in your tray.

Safari / macOS Preview

In the print dialog set Scale to 100% and make sure Scale to Fit is unchecked.

Firefox

Open More settings and set Scale to 100 instead of Fit to page width.

Adobe Acrobat / Acrobat Reader

Under Page Sizing & Handling choose Actual size. Do not leave it on Fit or Shrink oversized pages.

Every app — the same trap

If the dialog offers Fit, Shrink or Scale to Fit, that is the thing breaking your sheet. It is on by default because printers cannot print to the physical edge, so the software shrinks the whole page inside the margins. Set it to Actual size / 100% and your grid will be exact.

The grid is cut off at the edge or not centred

Cause: paper size or margins mismatch

Confirm the Paper size in the dialog is the size actually loaded in the printer. Printing a Letter PDF onto A4 forces a resize no setting can prevent, because the sheets are different shapes.
Turn off Borderless or Full-bleed printing if your printer offers it — it changes the effective printable area.
If the sheet has no visible margins at all, your driver may be expanding the page; set margins back to the driver default.

The page prints fine but the black or cream background is missing

Cause: the printer is in greyscale or economy mode

In the print dialog choose Color instead of Black & white or Grayscale.
Turn off Fast, Draft or Eco modes — they often drop backgrounds.
Some inkjets skip large dark fills in Fast mode; switch to Best for a black sheet.
A full black page uses a lot of ink. If you only need the tint, print the cream version instead — far cheaper and easier to check.

The PDF won't download, or opens damaged

Cause: browser cache, extension or a stalled download

Hard-refresh the page (Ctrl+F5 / Cmd+Shift+R) and download again.
Try the download in a private/incognito window — a bad cache entry is the usual culprit.
Disable PDF browser extensions temporarily and retry.
Check the file opens in a real PDF viewer (Acrobat, Preview, Edge PDF) rather than a webmail preview.
Still failing? Email hello@printgridpaper.com and we’ll look.

I need ten identical sheets

Cause: nothing is broken — this is a convenience tip

Set Copies per PDF on the generator to 10. One PDF, ten identical pages, print the whole file once.
Or print the same PDF 10 times from your viewer — works, but slower.
For hundreds of sheets, generate the PDF once and let your printer driver handle the run count.

Questions people ask when it still looks wrong

My bars read 96 mm, not 100 mm. What does that mean?

Your page was printed at 96% scale — the metric bar read 96 instead of 100. Every square is 4% small, and on a 5 mm grid that turns each square into 4.8 mm. Fix the scale setting above and reprint; do not try to "compensate" with a bigger grid, because your drawing will still be off by a consistent factor.

One bar is right but the other is wrong

That means the two bars are measuring differently, which is nearly impossible from a scale error — scaling shrinks both by the same ratio. Double-check the ruler unit: the upper bar is millimetres, the lower one inches. If one reads exactly 100 mm and the other exactly 4 in, your printer is spot on.

Does mobile printing work?

Usually badly. Phone print flows scale pages without asking and give you no control. For anything you intend to measure with a ruler, print from a computer. If you only need a rough grid for notes, phone printing is fine.