How to Print Charades Cards That Actually Last

To print charades cards properly you need three things: 65 lb or heavier card stock so the prompts don't show through, a print setting of "Actual Size" rather than "Fit to Page" so your cut lines stay accurate, and a card big enough not to vanish into a sofa cushion — 3.5 x 2 inches is the sweet spot at ten per sheet. Get those three right and a deck you make on a Tuesday evening will still be in the game cupboard in five years.

Most people get one of them wrong. They print on regular copy paper, hold a card up, and discover the person opposite can read the prompt through the back. Or they leave the default "fit to page" on, the whole sheet shrinks by four percent, and every cut line drifts a little further off until the last row is sliced in half.

This is the practical guide: paper, sizes, settings, cutting, laminating, and storage. If you're looking for the prompts themselves sorted into themed decks, our printable charades cards guide has ten ready-made sets — this page is about turning any of them into physical cards.

Card Stock: What to Buy

Paper weight is the decision that matters most, because it controls both show-through and durability.

65 lb cover stock is the answer for almost everyone. It's cheap, every home printer handles it, and it completely solves show-through. Go up to 110 lb index only if the deck will be handled by twenty-five children a week.

The quick show-through test: print one page, hold it up to a window. If you can read the words backwards, your opponents can read them across a coffee table.

A tip worth the whole article: buy card stock in five different colors and print each themed deck on its own color. When the decks inevitably get mixed together on somebody's living room floor, re-sorting takes thirty seconds instead of twenty minutes of reading.

Card Size and How Many Fit on a Sheet

All figures below are for US Letter (8.5 x 11 inches).

For the 10-up business-card layout, set page margins to 0.75 inch left and right and 0.5 inch top and bottom. That gives a 7 x 10 inch printable block, which divides cleanly into ten 3.5 x 2 cards with no gaps and no drift.

Don't go below 2 x 2 inches. I've made 1.5-inch cards to save paper and every one of them ended up under furniture. The paper you save isn't worth the deck you lose.

Font size: 14 pt minimum for the prompt, 9–10 pt for the category label above it. If the deck is for children or for a room where cards get passed around, go to 16 pt. Center the text and leave at least 0.2 inch of clear space inside every edge, because no home printer cuts perfectly straight.

How to Print Charades Cards Without Shrinking Them

This is where most decks go wrong, and the fix takes ten seconds.

1. Set scale to "Actual Size" or 100%. The default in most print dialogs is "Fit to Page" or "Shrink oversized pages," which quietly scales everything down by three to five percent to accommodate the printer's unprintable margin. Your card grid shrinks, your cut guides no longer line up with the ruler, and the error compounds across the sheet.

2. Turn off borderless printing. It scales up, which is the same problem in reverse.

3. Print from a PDF, not from a browser tab. Browsers rescale pages to fit their own margin model. Save to PDF first, open it in a PDF reader, and print at Actual Size. If you must print from Chrome, open More Settings, set Margins to Default (not None), and set Scale to Custom: 100.

4. Turn on "Background graphics" if your layout uses colored blocks or a colored border. Browsers strip background colors by default to save ink, which is helpful right up until it deletes your color-coding.

5. Set the paper type to Card Stock or Heavy. This runs the fuser hotter and slows the feed. Skip it on a laser printer and the toner will rub off the first time somebody shuffles.

6. Use the rear or manual feed tray for card stock if your printer has one. It gives a straighter paper path and dramatically fewer jams. Feed one sheet at a time for 110 lb stock.

7. Print one test page first. Always. Measure a card with a ruler. If it's 3.4 inches instead of 3.5, your scaling is still on.

8. Skip duplex printing unless you specifically want a card back. Consumer duplex units misregister by one to three millimeters, so any text or logo near the edge of the back will look crooked on every card. If you do want backs, keep the design centered with a generous margin.

Saving ink

Solid color backgrounds are, by a wide margin, the biggest ink cost in a card deck. A full-bleed colored card can use six to eight times the ink of the same card with a thin colored border. If you want color-coding without the cost, print on colored card stock instead of printing color onto white — same result, a fraction of the ink.

Draft or EconoMode is fine for text-only cards. It's not fine for cards you intend to laminate, because thin toner looks washed out under lamination.

A 60-Card Starter Deck, Laid Out for Printing

Here's a deck built to fit six sheets of 10-up business cards exactly. Print all six, cut once, and you have a complete game.

Sheet 1 — Easy actions (green stock) Tying a balloon · Peeling a banana · Licking an ice cream cone · Putting on socks · Combing your hair · Washing a window · Stirring soup · Zipping a jacket · Buttoning a shirt · Pouring a glass of milk

Sheet 2 — Animals and nature (green stock) Peacock · Camel · Squirrel · Ostrich · Jellyfish · Bat · Rooster · Caterpillar · Volcano erupting · Tree in a windstorm

Sheet 3 — Around the house (yellow stock) Vacuuming under the couch · Changing a lightbulb · Loading a dishwasher · Ironing a shirt · Taking out the trash · Making a bed · Unclogging a sink · Hanging a picture crooked · Folding laundry · Locking yourself out

Sheet 4 — Sports and hobbies (yellow stock) Archery · A golf swing · Weightlifting · Rowing · Rock climbing · Yoga · Knitting · Playing chess · Gardening · Jumping hurdles

Sheet 5 — Story titles (blue stock) The Three Little Pigs · Goldilocks · Cinderella · Peter Pan · Jack and the Beanstalk · Snow White · The Tortoise and the Hare · Humpty Dumpty · The Little Mermaid · Alice in Wonderland

Sheet 6 — Tricky (blue stock) Time travel · A traffic jam · An earthquake drill · A power outage · A magician's assistant · A robot running out of battery · Someone in a haunted house · A tightrope walker · A statue coming to life · Stuck in a revolving door

Green is easy, yellow is medium, blue is hard. Sixty cards covers a game of eight to twelve people for three full rounds with cards to spare.

If you'd rather not lay all of that out yourself, the free generator at charadesgamegenerator.com will shuffle themed packs and produce a print-ready sheet, which is a lot faster than fighting with a word processor's table borders.

Cutting: Tools and Technique

Rotary paper trimmer — the right tool. A cheap 12-inch trimmer costs about the same as a pizza and cuts a stack of three sheets perfectly straight. It is the single best purchase for anyone who prints game materials more than once.

Guillotine trimmer — faster on thick stock, slightly less precise, and the blade wanders on stacks.

Craft knife, metal ruler, self-healing mat — the most accurate option and the slowest. Use for a deck you really care about.

Scissors — perfectly fine. Draw or print light gray guide lines, cut just inside them, and accept slight irregularity. Charades cards do not need to be perfect.

Technique notes that make a real difference:

• Cut a maximum of three or four sheets at a time on a personal trimmer. Any more and the bottom sheets shift.
• Cut all the horizontal lines first, then all the vertical ones. Fewer alignment resets, straighter results.
• Use light gray hairlines for cut guides, not black. Black lines leave a visible dark edge on every card unless you cut exactly on them, which you won't.
• Or use corner crop marks instead of full lines. Four small ticks per card, no line to cut precisely along, and no leftover ink on the edges.
• A corner rounder punch (3 mm radius) makes cards feel professional and, more usefully, stops the corners from fraying and curling with handling. Two seconds per card.

Laminating and Other Ways to Make Cards Last

Thermal laminating pouches. 3 mil pouches stay flexible and shuffle well. 5 mil is stiff and nearly indestructible — the right choice for a classroom set that twenty-five kids will handle weekly.

The rule that people get wrong: leave at least 1/8 inch of sealed border around every card. If you cut right to the edge of the print, you expose the paper, moisture gets in, and the lamination peels within a term. Lay cards out with a gap between them inside the pouch, then cut between cards, leaving that sealed margin on all four sides.

Cold self-laminating pouches work with no machine at all. More expensive per card, but there's no warm-up and no risk of scorching.

Clear packing tape on both sides is the free version. It looks exactly as makeshift as it sounds, and it works.

Card sleeves. Print at 2.5 x 3.5 inches and slide each card into a penny sleeve from a game shop — a few dollars for a hundred. They shuffle beautifully, they're reusable, and you can swap the paper inside when you want a new deck. This is my favorite method for anything that gets played often.

The old-deck trick. Print your prompts on full-sheet sticker paper, stick them onto the faces of an old deck of playing cards, and cut. You get uniform, genuinely shuffleable cards for the cost of the sticker sheet. This is the classic teacher solution and it's still the best one for a deck of exactly 52 prompts.

Storing a Deck So It Survives

Two habits worth adopting:

Number the cards. A tiny number in one corner. When you find a stray card under the sofa in March you'll know which deck it belongs to, and when a deck comes up short you'll know exactly which prompt to reprint.

Keep the source file. Save the layout document or PDF in a folder with the deck name. Reprinting five lost cards should take two minutes, not an evening of retyping.

For classroom use: print six identical sets, laminate them, put each in its own labeled zip bag, and store all six in one bin. Table groups get a bag each, and you never have to sort a shared pile between periods.

Troubleshooting

FAQ

What paper should I use to print charades cards? Use 65 lb cover card stock (176 gsm) as your default. It stops prompts showing through from the back, survives handling, and feeds through any home printer. Step up to 110 lb index stock for classroom decks that get used weekly.

What size should charades cards be? 3.5 x 2 inches — standard business card size — is the best all-around choice, fitting ten per Letter sheet. Use 2.5 x 3.5 inches if you want them to fit standard card sleeves, or 3 x 5 inches when you need large print for children or older players. Don't go below 2 x 2 inches or the cards get lost.

How do I print charades cards without them shrinking? Set the scale to "Actual Size" or 100% and turn off "Fit to Page," "Shrink oversized pages," and borderless printing. Print from a PDF rather than directly from a browser, since browsers rescale pages. Print one test sheet and measure a card with a ruler before running the rest.

Do I need to laminate charades cards? Only if they'll be handled a lot. For a family deck used a few times a year, card stock alone is fine. For a classroom or church set, use 5 mil laminating pouches and leave an eighth of an inch of sealed border around each card so the edges don't peel. Card sleeves are a cheaper reusable alternative.

How many charades cards should I print? Plan roughly 1.5 cards per turn. That's about 30 cards for a small family game, 50 for eight to twelve players, and 110 for a party of twenty to forty. The extra half card per turn covers passes, misdraws, and the ones that go missing.

How do I keep several charades decks from getting mixed up? Print each deck on a different color of card stock. A spilled mix re-sorts by color in seconds. Add a small number in one corner of every card so you can identify strays and know exactly which cards to reprint if any go missing.