Spoonflower image too small? Make it 150 DPI at the size you want

If Spoonflower shows your design smaller than you planned, the file has too few pixels for that size. This guide is for the file you already have: an old painting scan, a Procreate canvas you started too small, or a piece of AI art. You'll work out the pixels you need, enlarge (upscale) the file to get them, and upload a version Spoonflower accepts.

How Spoonflower sizes your design

Spoonflower prints at 150 DPI. On upload it reads the pixel size of your file and divides by 150 to get the print size in inches. Its own formula runs the other way: width × length in inches × 150 = pixels.

DPI on a print and PPI (pixels per inch) in a file mean the same thing here, and Spoonflower's help pages use both. Whatever DPI is saved in the file, Spoonflower converts it to 150.

Example: Spoonflower's help page shows an 8 × 10 inch file saved at 72 PPI. That file is 576 × 720 pixels, so at 150 DPI it prints only 3.84 × 4.8 inches. The same 8 × 10 inch canvas saved at 300 PPI prints 16 × 20 inches.

Spoonflower lets you scale a design down, never above 100%. So the size your file opens at is the largest it will print.

Note: Our upscaler's PNG is tagged 300 DPI. On Spoonflower it will open at twice that size, because Spoonflower divides the pixels by 150. Resize to the exact width you want before you upload.

Pixels you need, Checked: Oct 2026

Multiply each side in inches by 150. Megapixels (MP) are width × height ÷ 1,000,000. Fat quarter and yard sizes below are for a 42 inch wide fabric; Spoonflower says a fat quarter is half the fabric width × 18 inches and a yard is the full width × 36 inches, and every fabric has its own width.

Print size	Pixels at 150 DPI	MP
4 × 4 in (10.2 cm)	600 × 600	0.36
8 × 8 in (20.3 cm)	1,200 × 1,200	1.44
12 × 12 in (30.5 cm)	1,800 × 1,800	3.24
18 × 18 in (45.7 cm)	2,700 × 2,700	7.29
24 × 24 in (61 cm), full wallpaper width	3,600 × 3,600	12.96
Fat quarter, 21 × 18 in (53.3 × 45.7 cm)	3,150 × 2,700	8.51
Yard of 42 in fabric, 42 × 36 in (106.7 × 91.4 cm)	6,300 × 5,400	34.02
Yard of 54 in fabric, 54 × 36 in (137.2 × 91.4 cm)	8,100 × 5,400	43.74

Most designs are a repeat tile, so you rarely need the full-yard pixels. You need a tile big enough to print at the scale you want, and Spoonflower repeats it across the fabric.

For any other size, the fabric DPI calculator does the sums: set it to 150 DPI and enter inches or cm.

Why the DPI box doesn't help

In Photoshop's Image Size, you can change 72 to 150 with Resample switched off. The pixel count stays the same, and only the label changes. Spoonflower ignores the label and divides the pixels by 150, so the design opens at exactly the same size as before.

Turning Resample on does add pixels, but they are averages of the old ones, and a big enlargement prints soft. Spoonflower's own help says enlarging an image "causes loss of detail, resulting in a blurry or pixelated print." Its advice is to create the design at print size from the start, which helps next time but not with the file in front of you.

AI upscaling is the fix for a file that already exists. It draws new edges and texture into the larger image, so a 4× or 8× file looks much sharper than a plain resize. Our AI upscaling vs Photoshop resize guide compares the two.

Enlarge the file, then set the size

1. Work out the pixels you need from the table above.
2. Divide by the pixels you have. If the answer is 4 or less, use 4×. Between 4 and 8, use 8×.
3. Upload the best copy of your design to the Image Upscaler and choose 4× or 8×. Free results go up to 36 megapixels, so free 8× works for designs up to about 750 × 750 px.
4. Open the PNG in Photoshop or GIMP. Resize it down to the exact pixel width you need. Making a file smaller costs no sharpness.
5. Check the motif edges, fine lines and the tile edges at 100% zoom.
6. Save it for Spoonflower (next section) and order a swatch before a full yard.

Example: A Procreate canvas of 1,200 × 1,200 px prints 8 inches on Spoonflower. You want a 24 inch wallpaper tile, which needs 3,600 px. 3,600 ÷ 1,200 = 3, so choose 4×. That gives 4,800 × 4,800 px (23 MP), which you then resize to 3,600 × 3,600 px.

The upscaler takes JPG, PNG, WEBP, TIFF and PSD, and you need a free account for your own designs. If a detail is unreadable in the source, the AI has to guess it, so compare small text and faces with the original.

Stay under 40 MB

Spoonflower takes JPG or PNG only, under 40 MB. It won't take TIF, GIF, PDF or Word files, and it prints in sRGB, so save in sRGB rather than CMYK. A large upscaled PNG with a lot of texture can go over 40 MB.

If yours does, try these in order:

• Resize to the exact pixels you need. An 8× result is often bigger than the print requires.
• Crop to one repeat tile. Spoonflower repeats it for you.
• Save as JPG at high quality (10 to 12 in Photoshop). It is usually far smaller than a PNG of the same design.

Tip: Keep the full-size PNG as your master and upload a JPG copy. If Spoonflower ever raises its limits, or you print elsewhere, you still have the best version.

Keep the repeat clean

An upscaler enlarges the inside of a tile well, but it doesn't treat the left edge as a neighbor of the right edge. The seams of a seamless tile can drift apart by a few pixels.

To keep the repeat:

1. Make a 3 × 3 grid of the tile in Photoshop (nine copies, edge to edge).
2. Upscale the grid.
3. Crop out the center tile. Its edges were in the middle of the image, so they still line up.

The grid has nine times the pixels of one tile, so check it fits the output limit. A 400 × 400 px tile makes a 1,200 × 1,200 px grid. At 4× that is 4,800 × 4,800 px (23 MP), which fits the free 36 MP, and the center tile is 1,600 × 1,600 px. At 8× it would be 9,600 × 9,600 px (92 MP), too big even for Pro (50 MP).

Then choose a repeat on Spoonflower. It offers five:

Repeat	What it does
Basic	Tiles from the lower left corner up and to the right
Half-drop	Each column steps down by half a tile
Half-brick	Each row steps right by half a tile
Center	Prints one copy in the middle of the fabric
Mirror	Flips the tile both ways to hide the seams

Fabric vs wallpaper

Fabric takes any tile size, and Spoonflower fills the width you order. Wallpaper is stricter. Spoonflower wallpaper is 24 inches wide, and the tile has to repeat a whole number of times across it, or the pattern won't line up from one panel to the next.

Tile width	Pixels at 150 DPI	Repeats across 24 in	Repeats that work
24 in	3,600	1	Basic, half-drop
12 in	1,800	2	Basic, half-brick, half-drop, mirror
8 in	1,200	3	Basic, half-brick
6 in	900	4	Basic, half-brick, half-drop, mirror
4 in	600	6	All
3 in	450	8	All
2 in	300	12	All
1 in	150	24	All

Half-drop and mirror need an even number of repeats across the panel (the 24 inch tile is the exception). The wallpaper design resolution guide covers 27 and 20.5 inch rolls from other printers.

What to do next

Look up the pixels you need in the table, or get them from the fabric DPI calculator at 150 DPI. If your file is short, upload it to the Image Upscaler, choose 4× or 8× for free, resize to the exact width and save a JPG or PNG under 40 MB for Spoonflower.