How to Print a PDF Without Margins

You designed something that fills the page — a photo, a poster, a card with full-page artwork. You print it. You get a thin white border around the whole thing. The design’s color and content stop at an invisible margin instead of running to the paper’s edge.

This is “borderless printing” and it’s specifically supported (or not supported) at the printer level. Here’s how to get edge-to-edge output.

Step 1: enable borderless mode in your printer’s settings

Most home printers support borderless printing for at least some paper sizes. The setting hides in the printer driver, usually under one of these names:

Borderless or Borderless Printing
Full Bleed
No Margins
Print to Edge
Edge-to-Edge

In the print dialog (from any application):

Click Properties or Preferences (varies by OS and printer)
Find the Paper or Layout tab
Look for the borderless option
Enable it
Pick the paper size — borderless may only work on specific sizes

Step 2: verify your printer actually supports it

Not every printer can print borderless:

Most inkjet printers: yes, especially photo printers (Canon, Epson, HP). Usually supported for 4×6, 5×7, 8.5×11, and some specialty sizes.

Most laser printers: limited — many have a ~5mm minimum margin on all sides. The technology constrains how close the toner can deposit to the edge.

Cheap multifunction printers: often supported in software but the actual print may have small white gaps due to mechanical limitations.

Office printers: usually no — they’re optimized for documents, not edge-to-edge work.

To check: print a test page with a colored background. If white edges remain even with borderless enabled, the printer can’t physically do it.

Step 3: configure the PDF correctly

The PDF itself needs to extend to the paper edge:

Designed for borderless: the artwork already extends edge-to-edge in the PDF source. Borderless print mode keeps it intact.

Has internal margins: the artwork has white space designed into it. Even borderless printing keeps those margins because they’re in the document, not added by the printer.

To check: open the PDF in a viewer and zoom to 100%. If you see any white space inside the page boundary, that’s part of the design, not a print artifact.

Step 4: choose the right paper

Borderless typically works on:

Photo paper (glossy, semi-gloss, matte) — designed for borderless
Plain paper — usually supports it, with some quality compromises near the edges

Doesn’t work as well on:

Cardstock (often has rougher edges that mark borderless prints)
Specialty papers (envelopes, business card sheets) — limited by paper handling

Common gotchas

The printer prints “almost” borderless but has a ~2mm white edge: even with borderless enabled, some printers can’t quite reach the paper edge due to mechanical limits.

Image fits the page but text gets cut at the edges: borderless prints typically scale slightly oversize to ensure full coverage. Important content too close to the edge can get clipped.

The print is shifted/offset from expected: borderless printing requires the paper to feed precisely. Even tiny mechanical variation causes alignment issues. If pure edge alignment is critical, regular margins are more reliable.

Mac vs Windows behavior differs: the same PDF can print differently on each OS due to driver implementations.

How to print a PDF to the edge

The full workflow:

Open the PDF in your preferred viewer (Adobe Reader, Preview, browser)
Print dialog: Cmd+P / Ctrl+P
Click “Properties” or “Page Setup” (location varies)
Choose paper size: pick the size of your physical paper
Enable borderless / full bleed
Verify the preview: it should show edge-to-edge
Click Print

The PDF content should print to the paper edge.

When the printer truly can’t do borderless

For prints absolutely requiring edge-to-edge:

Print on larger paper, then trim:

Print at the next size up (e.g., 8.5×14 instead of 8.5×11)
The content extends fully on the 8.5×11 portion
Trim the excess margin manually with a paper cutter

Send to a commercial print service:

Office Depot, Vistaprint, Staples, your local print shop
Commercial presses handle full bleed reliably
More expensive than home printing but the result is professional

Use a specialty printer:

Photo printers (Canon Pixma Pro, Epson SureColor) are designed for borderless output
More expensive than basic printers but the right tool for the job

Borderless from a non-PDF source

If you’re printing from Word, Pages, or Google Docs and want borderless:

Word: Page Setup → Margins → set all to 0 (Word may warn about it). Then File → Print → Properties → Borderless.

Pages: Document → set margins to 0 (or as small as possible). Then File → Print → check borderless option.

Google Docs: limited margin control; the PDF route is usually cleaner. Save as PDF first, then follow the PDF workflow above.

When the source needs to extend beyond the page boundary

For full-bleed designs (where the design needs to extend a few millimeters past the trim line to ensure no white shows after trimming):

In professional design software (InDesign, Illustrator):

Set page size to your target output (e.g., 8.5×11)
Set bleed to 0.125” (3mm) on all sides
Extend backgrounds and colors to the bleed line
Export as PDF with bleed marks included

When printed and trimmed, the design extends to the edge.

For consumer / casual printing, this level of precision usually isn’t needed — just enable borderless and accept the printer’s actual behavior.

When the issue is the PDF, not the printer

Some PDFs have an inherent “page size includes a margin” that’s part of the document:

Check: open the PDF, look at the actual content vs page boundary. If the page itself includes white margins, you’d need to either re-export the source document with smaller margins, or use PDF to Images to render the page as an image, then crop the margins in Image Cropper, then print the cropped image.

For documents from word processors (Word, Pages), regenerate with margins set smaller. For PDFs you received, the workaround above is the path.

Color and bleed for commercial print

If you’re sending a PDF to commercial printing, they typically want:

PDF with bleed: design extends 1/8” beyond trim line on all sides
CMYK color mode: see our CMYK vs RGB guide
High resolution embedded images: 300 DPI at the print size

This is more involved than home printing. The print shop usually provides specific guidelines.

TL;DR

Enable Borderless in printer driver: under “Borderless,” “Full Bleed,” or “Print to Edge”
Inkjet/photo printers support it; many laser printers don’t
The PDF needs to be designed edge-to-edge in the source
Test print: with a colored background to confirm the borderless actually works
When the printer can’t: print larger and trim, or use a commercial service
For Word/Pages: set margins to 0, then enable borderless
For PDFs with internal margins: regenerate from source or crop with Image Cropper workflow