Custom Christmas Cards

What are custom Christmas cards

A custom Christmas card is a folded holiday greeting you design yourself, a family photo, a company greeting or a card for a shop counter, printed full color and scored from one flat sheet into a 5" x 7" or a 4.25" x 5.5" card on any of 4 stocks. You print the front alone or both sides, and matching white wove envelopes can ship with the set.

Pick the finished size first, then the stock, from clean gloss to textured white linen, then front only or inside and out, and last the envelopes. Every card arrives scored along the fold, folded for you or shipped flat for hand assembly. If a Hanukkah greeting fits your list too, the Hanukkah Cards print on the same folded format, and the full Greeting Cards range covers every other occasion.

What sizes do custom Christmas cards come in

There are two finished sizes. The 5" x 7" folds from a 10" x 7" flat sheet and the 4.25" x 5.5" from an 8.5" x 5.5" sheet. Both are scored, and they arrive pre-folded or scored and flat, whichever you choose.

Families usually pick the 5" x 7", which leaves room for a full-bleed photo on the front and a longer note inside. A business with a long client list often goes to the compact 4.25" x 5.5" A2 size, lighter to mail and right for a short greeting. The single scored sheet keeps the crease clean and the panels lined up, and if you fold by hand or run the cards through an inserter, the scored-and-shipped-flat option sends them ready to fold on your own schedule. The sizes, finishes and stock list below follow the order you pick them in.

Open a free, professionally built layout in our design templates, drop in the family photo or the company logo, and write the greeting in the online editor. Pick a layout made for the size you ordered, since a 5" x 7" photo card and an A2 card place the picture differently.

Designed the card in your own software? Download the blank Christmas card template for your size. It shows the fold, the 1/8" bleed and the safe margin, so the photo on the front and the greeting inside stay clear of the crease and the cut. Place the art and upload.

Photo Christmas Cards on a Folded Card

Both sizes fold from a single scored sheet, which gives a photo card four panels to work with: the front, the two inside pages, and the back. How you use them decides how many photos the card holds.

• One photo, front only. The classic. A single image filling the front of a 5" x 7", the greeting inside. This is the layout that survives on a mantel, because one strong picture at that size reads from across a room and a grid of small ones does not.
• Front photo plus an inside spread. Printing both sides opens the two inside pages, so the front carries the hero shot and the inside holds three or four smaller ones with the year's news beside them. Four is the practical ceiling on the compact 4.25" x 5.5" before faces get too small to recognise.
• Photo front and back. Family on the front, the dog or the house on the back, greeting inside. It looks considered and costs no more than any other both-sides layout.

For a full bleed photo, the image has to run past the trim on all four edges, the standard allowance being an eighth of an inch on every side, or a hairline of white shows along one edge after cutting. Size the photo to the finished card first and check it at 100 percent, since a phone photo that looks perfect on the phone can be short of resolution once it is stretched to fill a 5" x 7". And keep faces well inside the trim: a card is cut in a stack, and anything sitting right on the trim line is asking to lose a forehead.

What paper stocks and finishes can you choose

4OVER4 offers 4 stocks for custom Christmas cards: 14pt Gloss Cover, 14pt White Linen, 14pt Uncoated Cover at 30% post-consumer waste, and 13pt Uncoated Cover at 100% post-consumer waste. Finish options are a Standard finish or a High Gloss UV Coating, and ink prints 4/0 full color on the front or 4/4 full color on both sides.

Choose the stock for the design on the front. 14pt Gloss Cover makes photos and deep reds snap, and a High Gloss UV Coating pushes that shine further. Reach for 14pt White Linen when you want a textured, formal card that reads premium in the hand. If a greener card matters to you, two uncoated stocks are made from recycled fiber, one at 30% post-consumer waste and one at 100% post-consumer waste, both with a natural surface that takes a pen well for a handwritten signature. Set your ink to full color on the front with a blank inside, or full color on both sides when you want art or a message on the inside panels too.

What Each Stock Does to a Holiday Design

The four stocks are not interchangeable once a photo or a deep red is involved.

• 14pt Gloss Cover. The one for photographs. Reds and greens sit brightest here and detail stays sharp, which is why almost every family photo card runs on it.
• 14pt White Linen. A woven texture you feel before you look. It makes a typographic or illustrated card read like proper stationery, and it softens photographs, so it suits a company greeting or an engraved-style design more than a picture of the kids.
• 30% and 100% post-consumer waste uncoated. Ink settles into the sheet rather than sitting on it, so color is quieter and warmer. Pick the 100% PCW stock when the card itself is part of the message, and note that uncoated is the only one of the four you can comfortably handwrite a note on.
• High Gloss UV Coating. A shine across the whole printed face that deepens dark colors and shrugs off fingerprints on a card that will be handled by everyone in an office. The trade-off is that most pens will not write on it, so leave an uncoated area or keep the handwriting inside.

Standard production is 5 business days whichever you choose, with 4-day, 3-day, 2-day, Next-Day and Same-Day rush available, so the finish is a design decision rather than a scheduling one.

How much do custom Christmas cards cost

Custom Christmas cards start at $31.86 per set of 25, about $1.27 a card, and the per-card price keeps dropping as the quantity climbs toward 100,000, where a card falls under 5 cents. A 700-card run is $216.38, 6,000 run $542.60, and a 25,000-card run lands at $1,434.48. Count the names on your list, add a few spares for the ones you forget, set the slider below to that number, and read the set total and the per-card cost.

Do custom Christmas cards come with envelopes

Yes. Tick the matching white wove envelopes option at checkout and every card ships with an envelope sized to it, so the set arrives ready to address and mail. Watch how business christmas cards printed online come together in our video. Before printing you can send straight to production, approve a free online proof, or order a next-day hardcopy proof, and choose whether the cards arrive pre-folded or scored and shipped flat.

With the envelopes added, each card in the run has its own, and nobody has to hunt for the right size in December. Because every card is scored, the fold stays clean whether the plant folds it or ships it flat for hand assembly, and the box arrives as a complete holiday set. If you want a bigger folded piece for the occasion, the Folded Invitations print on the same style of scored, folded card.

The matching white wove envelopes come unprinted, which is deliberate. A blank envelope can be hand addressed at the kitchen table, run through a laser printer from a mail merge, or given to a calligrapher, and a white wove takes ink from all three without feathering. Cards and envelopes are packed separately rather than pre-stuffed, so nothing is creased in the box and you can address the envelopes on one evening and stuff them on another.

Order the envelopes with the cards rather than after them. It is the single most common thing people forget, and chasing envelopes in the second week of December costs more time than the printing did.

How do custom Christmas cards compare to the rest of the range

Christmas cards are the seasonal pick. If you are weighing a Hanukkah greeting, an all-occasion greeting card, or a folded invitation for a holiday party, the chart below lines up Christmas cards against their closest siblings so you can compare the starting price on each before you choose.

How fast can you get custom Christmas cards printed

Custom Christmas cards print on a 5 business day standard turnaround, and when a date sneaks up you can move that to 4-day, 3-day, 2-day, Next-Day or even Same-Day production out of the NYC plant. Each step buys back time for a set amount on top of the base price, so you only pay for speed when a mailing date actually demands it. Order Same-Day by the daily cutoff and the job ships that same afternoon. 4OVER4 lands 99.8% of orders on time, so the cards reach you before the tree comes down. For a card that must arrive before December 25, work back from the arrival date, as the order dates below lay out.

Order Dates That Still Make Christmas

Work backwards from the day you want the card sitting on someone's mantel, not forwards from today. Four blocks of time sit between the two, and only one of them is printing.

1. Mail transit. Whatever your usual mail takes, add days for the December peak. This is the block people underestimate every year.
2. Addressing and stuffing. Hand addressing 50 cards is an evening. Two hundred is a weekend, or a mail merge onto the envelopes. Decide which before you order.
3. Production. 5 business days standard. If the calendar has already run out, that compresses to 4-day, 3-day, 2-day, Next-Day or Same-Day rush.
4. Proof and artwork. Leave yourself a day at the front for approving the proof, and remember the photo has to exist before any of this starts.

Add those four together and you have your real order date. If the sum lands in the past, order on a rush turnaround and address the envelopes while the cards are on press.

See the Rest of Our Cards

Christmas cards are one stop in a much larger lineup, and you can scan the full print product range any time, or browse every folded style on greeting cards printing. If a Hanukkah card, an all-occasion greeting or a folded invitation would serve you better, each option shows its own starting price and links straight to its product page.

Sending something outside December, or want the same folded format for a thank you, an invitation or a company announcement? The greeting cards printing range runs the same folded sizes all year. If the send is a congregation or a community list rather than a family one, church postcards mail without an envelope, which cuts both the stuffing and the postage. Two videos show that flat mailer format: the standard postcards video overview and the Black Friday postcards video.

Print Your Christmas Cards Today

At 4OVER4.COM, quality comes first, and it's backed by a satisfaction guarantee and 25+ years of printing since 1999. A family photo on 14pt gloss or a company greeting on white linen, sent in its own envelope, is the card that stays on the mantel until January. For raised gloss on a soft card, see our spot uv christmas cards. Need them before the mailing deadline? Our Same-Day production keeps you covered. Print your custom Christmas cards today.