Tarpapel Sizes: How Many Sheets for 2×3, 3×4, 4×6 ft (A4, Long, Short)

"How many sheets do I need?" is the first question anyone making a tarpapel asks, and the answer depends on three things: the size you want, the paper you have, and whether you mean 3 × 4 feet or 3 × 4 sheets. Those are very different banners. This guide gives exact counts for the common tarpaulin sizes on A4, Long and Short bond paper, the finished size of common sheet grids, and a few rules of thumb for picking a size your photo can actually support.

Feet or Sheets? Two Ways to Size a Tarpapel

• By finished size — the way tarpaulin shops quote: 2 × 3 ft, 3 × 4 ft, 4 × 6 ft. The sheet count follows from the paper.
• By sheets — "three across, four down". The finished size follows from the paper: a 3 × 4 grid of Long sheets is about 58 × 123 cm (roughly 2 × 4 ft), not 3 × 4 ft.

The Tarpapel Maker lets you enter either and always shows the other, so you never print the wrong thing.

Sheets Needed for Common Tarpaulin Sizes

Counts below use the tool's defaults — an 8 mm unprintable margin and a 10 mm overlap strip — with sheets in portrait. Where turning the sheets landscape saves paper, that count is shown too.

Long bond paper almost always wins on count because each sheet covers more area — a 3 × 4 ft banner is 20 Long sheets versus 25 on A4 or Short.

How Big Is a 3 × 4 (or 2 × 3, 4 × 4…) Sheet Tarpapel?

If you think in sheets, this is the finished size after overlaps, width × height with sheets in portrait:

Handy coincidences: 3 × 4 Long sheets is almost exactly a 2 × 4 ft banner, and 4 × 5 Long sheets is about 2.5 × 5 ft.

Which Size Should You Choose?

• Birthday or christening backdrop behind a table: 3 × 4 ft or 4 × 6 ft. Sit people in front of it and the joins disappear in photos.
• Classroom or bulletin-board poster: 2 × 3 ft, or a 3 × 3 sheet grid, fits most boards.
• Welcome / congratulations sign on a gate or wall: 2 × 4 ft (landscape), which is 3 × 4 Long sheets turned sideways.
• School project or science-fair board: A1 (59 × 84 cm) — 10 to 16 sheets depending on paper.

Will Your Photo Survive the Size?

Paper banners are viewed from a metre or more away, so 100–150 DPI is plenty and anything above about 55 DPI still reads well — print shops run large tarpaulins in that range. As a rule of thumb, divide your photo's width in pixels by the poster width in inches:

• A 4,000 px wide phone photo on a 3 ft (36 in) banner ≈ 110 DPI — fine.
• A 1,080 px Facebook download on the same 3 ft ≈ 30 DPI — blocky. Use a smaller size or get the original file.
• A design with big text and flat colours looks sharp at much lower DPI than a detailed photo does.

The tool shows a green / amber / red sharpness badge the moment you pick a size, so you can check before printing a single page.

Why the Counts Are Not Just "Width ÷ Paper Width"

Every sheet loses an 8 mm margin on each side because inkjets cannot print to the edge, and neighbouring sheets repeat a 10 mm strip so you have something to glue. So an A4 sheet contributes 184 × 271 mm of new image, not 210 × 297. That is why 3 ft of banner takes five A4 columns rather than four and a bit. If your printer can do borderless printing you can drop the margin to 0 in the tool's print options and save a column or row on large banners.

Pick a size from the tables, open the Tarpapel Maker, type it into "Exact size" (or set the grid), and the sheet count, finished size and sharpness check appear instantly. For the full print-and-assemble walkthrough see How to Make a Tarpapel.