Free tool

A QR code
that survives print.

Q: How do I make a QR code for an event?

Encode the final link — a printed code cannot be changed afterwards — then print it black on white with a clear white margin four modules deep on every side. Size it from the distance it will be read: roughly a tenth of that distance, and not below about 0.4 mm per module on paper. Then scan the printed proof rather than the screen; a code that reads perfectly on a monitor can fail on textured stock.

Generated on your device, downloadable as SVG or PNG, and sized honestly — because a code printed too small does not degrade, it simply stops working.

How do I make a QR code for an event?

Encode the final link — a printed code cannot be changed afterwards — then print it black on white with a clear white margin four modules deep on every side. Size it from the distance it will be read: roughly a tenth of that distance, and not below about 0.4 mm per module on paper. Then scan the printed proof rather than the screen; a code that reads perfectly on a monitor can fail on textured stock.

Make one.

For print the SVG comes out measured in millimetres, at the size worked out below it, so it arrives in a layout at the size it was sized for rather than scaled to fill a gap.

The link the code opensPaste the finished address. It is encoded here, on your device, and never sent anywhere.

Where it will appear

Error correction

Encoded in this page. No third-party service is called and the link is never transmitted — which matters, because an event link is usually a private address.

A printed QR code is permanent. The page behind it is not. Once two hundred cards exist, the code points where it points forever — so encode a link on a domain you control and can redirect later, not a share link minted by a photo app or a document service. Those links expire, and the failure arrives months after the event, when guests are trying to find the photographs.

What a code is genuinely for.

A QR code is a shortcut for someone who is already standing in front of it. That single fact decides almost every good and bad use of one at an event.

Directions and parking, on the day. Scanned in a car outside the church, not at a desk three weeks earlier.
A photo album that fills up afterwards. The one use where a code plainly beats writing an address out.
An RSVP page. Good — provided the paper also carries the deadline in words, for the guest who never scans anything.
A menu, a translation, an order of service. Useful where printing every version for every guest would be absurd.
Not the ceremony time, the date or the venue. Those belong printed on the card. A guest reads an invitation in their hands; a code makes them fetch their phone to learn something the paper should have told them.
Not anywhere without signal. The code will scan in a stone barn; the page will not load. If the venue has no reception, the code needs a fallback printed beside it.
Never on its own. A naked square gets ignored. Three or four words — Scan for directions — are what turn it into an instruction, and they should be set in your own typeface beside the code, which is why this tool gives you the code alone.

How small it may be.

Two rules apply and the larger one wins: a code is read from about ten times its own width, and print cannot resolve a module below roughly 0.4 mm on uncoated stock. The tool above works both out for the link you enter, because a longer link means more modules and a larger minimum.

Where it goes	Read from	Smallest width	Which rule binds
Invitation, place card, details card	about 20 cm	20 mm	Distance — a link of about 50 characters
The same card, a longer link	about 20 cm	21–36 mm	Printing resolution — more characters, more modules
Menu or table card, read seated	about 40 cm	40 mm	Distance
Welcome sign, table plan, order of the day	about 2 m	20 cm	Distance
Projected behind a stage	about 5 m	50 cm	Distance

The white margin is part of the code, not padding around it: four modules on all four sides, and it must be genuinely light. A code set directly onto a coloured or photographic ground is the commonest way a printed one fails.

Error correction is not a safety setting.

Every QR code carries redundant data so it can still be read when part of it is missing. The four levels — L, M, Q and H — recover from roughly 7%, 15%, 25% and 30% damage. It is tempting to read that as a quality dial and choose H.

It is not one. The redundancy has to be stored, so the same link at level H needs a larger grid than at level L. Print both at the same physical width and every module in the H version is smaller — which is exactly what makes a code hard to scan. On a card at 20 mm, level Q with a clean margin will out-perform level H squeezed into the same square.

The correction budget is there for damage: a thumbprint, a fold, a spot of wax, a logo placed over the centre. It is not a reserve you can spend on printing the code too small, because a code that is too small is not damaged — it is uniformly unreadable, and no amount of redundancy recovers it.

One code, or one code each.

This tool makes the first kind. It is worth knowing what the second kind does, because most of what people want from a QR code at an event turns out to need it.

One shared code

Everyone scans the same square

It can only lead somewhere general: the wedding website, the album, the venue's directions. Whoever scans it then has to find themselves in what they land on — their name on a list of a hundred and forty, their table on a plan of eighteen, the right language among three.

One code per guest

The code knows who is holding it

Evorrah's guest platform gives each guest a private code and prints it on their own card. It opens their reply page already addressed to them, shows their table, and reads in their own language. At the door the same code checks them in. It is included with every plan, at no extra cost.

Common questions

Can I change where the code points after it is printed?

Not the code — but you can change where the link goes, if you own it. Encode an address on your own domain and set up a redirect behind it; then the printed square is permanent and the destination is not. Encode a link somebody else minted and you have printed their decision onto your cards.

Do QR codes expire?

The pattern does not; it will still decode in twenty years. What expires is the page behind it. Share links from photo and file services are the usual casualty — they are often valid for months rather than years, which is precisely the window in which people go looking for wedding photographs.

Can we put our monogram in the middle of it?

Yes, within limits, and it costs you real error correction. Anything sitting on top of the code is damage as far as a scanner is concerned, so a centred mark has to stay well inside the budget of the level you chose — and that budget is also what absorbs the fold, the thumbprint and the spot of wax, so it cannot all be spent on the mark. If you do it, scan a printed proof before the run. A screen proof hides exactly the failures that matter.

Can the code be in our colours instead of black?

It can be dark-on-light in a very dark version of your colour, and it should be tested. It cannot safely be light-on-dark: plenty of scanners will not attempt an inverted code at all. This tool outputs black on white deliberately — if a coloured code is wanted, it is a decision to make against a printed proof rather than a setting to tick here.

Will it work if the venue has no signal?

The code will scan; the page will not load, which looks identical to a broken code from where the guest is standing. Anywhere reception is doubtful, print the essential information beside the code and let the code be the convenience rather than the only route.

Does anything I type here get sent to you?

No. The code is built by the JavaScript on this page, in your browser — there is no request to any server, ours or anyone else's, and there is nothing to log. That is why the tool exists in this form: most online QR generators send the link you type to a third party, and an event link is usually a private address.

The interesting code is the one that is different on every card.

Evorrah's guest platform gives every guest a private code — their reply page, their table, their language, their check-in at the door. It comes with every plan rather than as an add-on.

See the guest platform

Per guestHow personalisation works TimingRSVP deadline calculator Before printProof checker All of themFree tools