1cm Paper

About 1cm graph paper

One-centimetre squares are large, unambiguous and easy for small hands. They are the standard choice for primary maths — area and perimeter work, coordinate introduction, and any task where a child needs to write inside the square rather than at the intersection.

What people use it for

• Primary school area and perimeter work
• First coordinate grids
• Scale drawing where 1 cm = 1 m
• Large-format planning and layout

Printing it at true size

The single most common problem with printed graph paper is scale. Browsers and PDF readers shrink a page by default so it clears the printer’s unprintable margin, which turns a 1 cm (10 mm) grid into something slightly smaller. Set the print scale to 100% — sometimes labelled “Actual size” — and switch off “Fit to page” or “Shrink oversized pages”.

Print one sheet, measure it, and only then print the rest. If you do not have a ruler handy, the calibrated on-screen ruler measures in millimetres and inches, and the unit converter handles the arithmetic if you need to move between the two.

Other grid sizes

Every variant below is the same generator with a different preset — pick whichever spacing suits the job, or open the full graph paper generator and set your own.