A4, Letter and Legal: page sizes for HTML to PDF in mm, inches and pixels
Exact page and printable-area dimensions to design HTML that fits A4, Letter and Legal PDFs.
Designing HTML for a PDF is easier when you know exactly how much room you have. This page lists the dimensions of each paper size the converter supports, in the units you’ll actually use in CSS.
Paper sizes
| Size | mm | Inches | CSS px |
|---|---|---|---|
| A4 | 210 × 297 | 8.27 × 11.69 | 794 × 1123 |
| US Letter | 215.9 × 279.4 | 8.5 × 11 | 816 × 1056 |
| US Legal | 215.9 × 355.6 | 8.5 × 14 | 816 × 1344 |
Values are portrait width × height. Landscape swaps them. CSS pixels are fixed at 96 per inch in print, regardless of screen resolution, so 1 mm is about 3.78px.
Printable area with the default 10 mm margins
| Size | Content area (mm) | Content area (CSS px) |
|---|---|---|
| A4 portrait | 190 × 277 | 718 × 1047 |
| A4 landscape | 277 × 190 | 1047 × 718 |
| Letter portrait | 195.9 × 259.4 | 740 × 980 |
| Letter landscape | 259.4 × 195.9 | 980 × 740 |
| Legal portrait | 195.9 × 335.6 | 740 × 1268 |
For other margins, subtract twice the margin from each dimension. With margins set to 0, the content area is the full page.
What this means for your CSS
- A layout narrower than about 718px fits A4 portrait without shrinking. Wider content makes the whole page scale down to fit (or is cut off if it sits in a scrolling container), so use landscape or a narrower layout. A desktop layout designed at 1200px will not fit portrait pages unless it’s responsive.
- Responsive designs adapt automatically. The page is laid out at the printable width, so your media queries for narrow screens apply, often giving a tidy single-column PDF.
- Use physical units for print-specific sizes:
width: 190mm,font-size: 11pt,margin-top: 12mm. They map exactly to the page. - Choose the page size in the converter. A CSS
@page { size: A4; }rule doesn’t override the selected paper size, so set it in the settings or the API’spaperfield. Orientation keywords and margins in@pagedo take effect.
Which size should I use?
- A4 is the standard almost everywhere outside North America, including the UK, Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia.
- Letter is the standard in the United States and Canada. Letter is slightly wider and shorter than A4.
- Legal is used in the US for some contracts and forms, and helps long tables fit on fewer pages.
If readers will print on both A4 and Letter, design for the area common to both: no wider than A4 (210 mm) and no taller than Letter (279.4 mm), minus margins.