5mm Paper

About 5mm graph paper

Five-millimetre squares are the metric equivalent of quad ruled and the default in most of Europe and Asia. Every fifth line is drawn heavier, which creates a 25 mm major grid and makes counting squares far quicker than on a uniform grid.

What people use it for

• School maths exercise books
• Scale drawings in centimetres
• Bar charts and data plotting
• Knitting and beading charts

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 5 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.