QR Code Stencil Generator

How to make a QR code stencil

1. Use a short link. Fewer characters means fewer, bigger squares, which are easier to cut and paint. The note under the text box tells you how many characters fit one size smaller.
2. Pick the material. It sets the island handling, square size and error correction. Change anything you like; the numbers are starting points, not tested limits.
3. Check the preview. The scan check reads the painted preview with ZXing, an open-source QR decoder. A pass means the drawing on screen reads back as your text. It says nothing about your paint, surface or lighting.
4. Download and cut. SVG for Cricut Design Space, Silhouette Studio or LightBurn (sizes are in mm). DXF for laser and CNC software. PDF tiles to print at 100% and cut by hand with a craft knife. STL to 3D print a stencil plate.
5. Tape it flat and paint lightly. Hold the can upright, some distance from the stencil, and build up thin coats. Lift the stencil straight up, then scan the result with a phone before you paint more of them.

Bridges, spacer grid or islands?

When you cut the dark squares out of a sheet, some light parts end up surrounded by cut-out areas: the ring inside each corner square, and small light patches in the data. Those parts (islands) would fall out. There are three ways to deal with them, and this tool does all three:

• Bridges add thin strips of sheet that hold each island to the rest. The tool finds every island, then picks the fewest, shortest bridges, steered away from the corner squares' centre lines and the timing lines. Each bridge runs off the middle of the squares it crosses, because the middle is where scanners read each square. The dark area stays almost whole, so this usually reads best for spray paint.
• Spacer grid shrinks every dark square a little, so each one is its own hole and the sheet stays one piece. The three big corner squares and the smaller alignment squares are cut as whole rings with four small gaps, because scanners find a code by those shapes. It's the sturdiest option for laser-cut card, but the gaps lower the contrast.
• Keep islands is for adhesive stencil vinyl: transfer tape holds the islands in place while you apply it, so no bridges are needed and the result is cleanest. The preview marks loose islands in red.

Inverse stencils for chalk on asphalt

A normal stencil with dark paint on a light surface gives a normal QR code. For light paint or chalk on a dark surface, choose the inverse stencil: it cuts the light squares and the quiet-zone border instead, so the painted code still comes out dark-on-light. If the paint and the stencil don't match, you get a light-on-dark (inverted) code, which many phone cameras won't read. The scan check tells you when that happens. On inverse stencils, bridges and gaps inside the three corner squares are kept to 8% of a square: in our tests, wider dark lines across a corner square's light ring stopped the ZXing decoder reading most codes.

Sizes are estimates

The starting square sizes (10 mm for spray, 6 mm for 3D-printed plates, 5 mm for vinyl, 4 mm for cake and fabric, 3 mm for laser-cut card) are our estimates. We haven't cut and sprayed test stencils to prove them. For reference, the stencil maker Bay Stencil suggests no square smaller than a pencil eraser (Bay Stencil blog, read 2026-10-28), and the qr2laser script refuses squares under 2 mm (qr2laser, read 2026-10-28). The total width is (squares across + 2 × quiet zone) × square size. The quiet zone defaults to 4 squares because DENSO WAVE, which created the QR code, says it needs a four-module margin on all sides (qrcode.com, read 2026-10-28).