What size should a company stamp be, and what colour
A round company stamp is usually 38mm to 42mm across, a rectangular one about 58mm by 22mm, and the ink is blue or black where a signature is blue, red where the seal is the authority.
What size should a company stamp be, and what colour templates, ready to edit
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Two questions come up before anybody types a word into a stamp: how big should it be, and what colour. Both have real answers, and both are usually got wrong in the same direction. A stamp designed on a screen at 500 pixels looks fine until it is placed at true size on a document, where the registration number turns into a grey smudge.
What you get
- Round company seal: a 38mm stamp is the most common single size and a 40mm stamp is the other, with 38mm to 42mm the convention almost everywhere. It is the size that fits a signature block without covering it. Every stamp size in mm below is the finished impression, not the block it sits in.
- Rectangular office stamp: around 58mm by 22mm for a name and two or three lines, which is the size most self-inking blocks come in.
- Notary and professional seals: often 40mm to 45mm, because they carry more required wording than a company stamp does.
- A custom size stamp is set in millimetres rather than chosen from presets, so a small stamp for a receipt book and a large stamp for a certificate come from the same design. A mini stamp under about 25mm carries two short lines and no more. Smallest text on the stamp should not go below about 6pt at true size. If a registration number needs to be smaller than that to fit, the stamp is too small or the wording is too long.
- Company stamp colour: a blue stamp maker and a black stamp maker are the same picker, and blue or black is right where the stamp accompanies a signature and the signature is the authority. A green stamp or a purple stamp is unusual on business paperwork and reads as informal, which is occasionally what you want. The stamp colour picker takes any value, not a fixed palette. Red where the seal itself carries the authority, which is the convention across most of Asia for a company chop.
- Avoid pure black on anything that will be photocopied repeatedly. Dark blue survives a third-generation copy better and still scans as clearly.
How to make it
- Decide the shape first: round for a seal, rectangular for an office stamp.
- Set the diameter or width to the real size, 38mm to 42mm for a round seal.
- Type the wording and check the smallest line is still readable at that size.
- Pick the ink colour to match the convention where the document is going.
- Preview at true size before you download, not zoomed in.
Questions
What size should a company stamp be in mm?
A round company stamp is conventionally 38mm to 42mm in diameter. That is not a legal requirement in most places, it is what fits: large enough to carry the company name around the ring and a registration number across the middle, small enough to sit next to a signature without covering the text underneath.
What size is a rectangular company stamp?
Around 58mm by 22mm is the common self-inking size and it holds three or four short lines comfortably. If you need more lines than that, go wider rather than smaller, because shrinking the type is what makes a stamp illegible once it is actually pressed.
What colour should a company stamp be?
It depends on what the stamp is doing. Where it sits beside a signature and the signature carries the authority, blue or black is standard and blue photocopies better. Where the seal itself is the authority, which is the convention for a company chop across China, Hong Kong, Singapore and much of Asia, red is expected and a blue one looks wrong.
Does the size affect whether a stamp is accepted?
Rarely by rule, often in practice. A stamp too small to read is queried, and a stamp so large it obscures the text it sits on gets rejected by whoever has to read the document underneath. Design at the size it will be used and check it there rather than zoomed in.
How to apply a stamp to a document?
How to add a stamp, how to place a stamp and how to apply a stamp are the same three steps: download the transparent PNG, insert it as a picture in Word, Google Docs or your PDF editor, and set its wrapping to float over the text rather than sit inline. In Word the .docx download already carries that setting.
Should the stamp be transparent?
For anything going onto a document, yes. A stamp on a white background covers whatever it lands on with a white box, which looks pasted on and hides the line underneath. A transparent PNG lets the text show through around the ink, which is what a real impression does.
What should a company stamp look like?
A round or rectangular mark, one ink colour, with the registered company name as the largest text. Round reads as a seal and identifies the company; rectangular reads as administrative and suits an address block or a dated message. Keep it around 40mm so it prints legibly at document scale.
What should a company stamp say?
The registered company name exactly as it is on the register, and usually the registration number. Many businesses add the town, the address or a website. Anything more than about forty characters on the ring stops being readable at real size.
Who can use a company stamp?
Whoever the company authorises. A stamp is not a signature and carries no authority of its own: it identifies the company, and the person applying it is the one acting. Because a digital stamp is a file, it is worth deciding who holds it in the same way you would decide who holds the physical one.
Estamplab is a design tool. This page describes common commercial practice rather than giving legal, tax or financial advice, and practice changes. Where a specific document matters, check the requirement with the body receiving it. Only produce a mark your own organisation or your own credentials are entitled to use.