How many fridge magnets to order

By Fridge Magnets Editorial

The door sets the count before the guest list does. With 6 mm of air between them, a 50 cm door takes nine 50 mm squares, eight 57 mm rounds, or four 4 x 6 inch prints. Order to the layout, add named spares, and allow 1 to 3 business days production plus 5 to 8 days shipping.

How many magnets fit on a fridge door? Fewer than the shopping cart implies, and the gap between those two numbers is where most over-ordering happens. Usable door width on most models is 40 to 60 cm. Everything below comes out of that one measurement.

The row arithmetic

Take the usable width, add one gap, divide by the magnet width plus one gap, round down. Written out, a 50 cm door with 6 mm between 57 mm rounds is (500 + 6) divided by (57 + 6), which is 8.03, so eight across.

Six millimeters is tight. It is about the narrowest gap that still looks like a decision rather than a mistake, and it is the figure behind every count in the table. Open the gap to 10 mm, which is closer to how a real door ends up, and most rows drop by one.

Turn the 51 x 76 mm rectangle on its side and it is 76 mm wide, so a 50 cm door goes from eight across to six. Orientation is worth deciding before you order a set, because a row that mixes both never lines up.

Rows, and the number nobody publishes

Multiplying a row by the number of rows gives you the door's capacity, and capacity is a bad target. We have no usable-height figure to give you: door height moves with the model, with where the freezer split falls, and with whether an ice and water dispenser has taken a panel out of the middle. Measure your own and divide the same way you divided the width.

What we can say about rows is that the useful limit arrives before the geometric one. Three rows of eight 57 mm rounds is 24 magnets on a 50 cm door, and at that point the door has no white space left and you have stopped seeing any single photograph. Two rows reads as a display. Four reads as a noticeboard.

What ends up on the door, and what ends up in a drawer

No survey we would trust has published a figure for how many magnets a household keeps on display against how many go in a drawer, and we are not going to make one up. The arithmetic is still useful without it. If the door shows eight at a time and you order 24, you have bought a rotation, not a display, and that is a fine thing to buy deliberately and an annoying thing to discover.

Photo magnets in particular get replaced rather than added to. A set of eight gets swapped for a newer set of eight, and the old eight go in the drawer with the takeaway menus. Order the second set when you want it rather than ordering sixteen now, unless a price break says otherwise, which is what bulk against single is about.

Ordering a gift set

A gift set wants to be a complete thing on arrival. Six to twelve magnets of one size and one crop family fills a row or two of the recipient's door and looks intentional; three magnets looks like the rest got lost in the post.

Size the set to the recipient's door rather than yours if you have ever seen it. Failing that, 57 mm rounds or 64 mm squares are the safe default, because eight or seven across a 50 cm door works on almost any fridge, and the pressed build holds well clear of anything a photograph asks of it, so the set will still be where you put it when the door gets slammed. Gift ideas covers what goes on the magnets.

Order one test print first if the seller will take an order of one. Shutterfly's listed minimum is 1 at $2.50, which makes a proof cheap on sheet. Pressed magnets do not publish a minimum, so the answer there is to ask.

Ordering for a wedding guest list

Count households, not guests. One magnet goes on one fridge, so a couple at the same address is one magnet, and a family of five is one magnet unless the adult children have their own kitchens.

Then add spares by name rather than by percentage. Both sets of parents want one to keep. The couple wants two, one for the fridge and one for the box of things from the wedding. Add one each for the addresses you are still chasing, one for the photographer if the design is theirs, and one to keep flat and unhandled in case a reprint is ever needed for comparison. That list is usually six to ten magnets on top of the household count, and every one of them has a reason attached, which is more honest than adding ten percent.

Format matters for posting. A 0.5 mm sheet magnet at 51 x 76 mm posts flat inside a card in an ordinary envelope. A pressed magnet at about 4 mm needs a rigid mailer and costs more to send, per magnet, than the magnet may have cost. Work that into the quantity, because postage is where a save-the-date budget actually goes. Wedding save-the-dates covers the design side.

Ordering for a trade show

Give-away rates are not something anyone publishes and not something we will guess at. Order against what you can carry and what the price break gives you instead. Vistaprint's minimum of 25 at $1.20 each is the low end of the market; the practical quantities for a stand run well above that, and the per-magnet price falls as the run grows because the setup is spread over more units.

Two things decide the size rather than the crowd. Weight, since a box of pressed magnets at about 4 mm each is heavier than the same count of 0.5 mm sheet and you are carrying it. And whether the magnet is the giveaway or the carrier for something else; a magnet with a phone number is a giveaway, a magnet holding a printed calendar is a bigger object with a bigger box. Promotional and business magnets covers the formats, and best business magnets covers who prints them.

Order the run in one go. Splitting a promotional order across two batches pays the setup twice and risks a color shift between them, which shows immediately when two magnets sit side by side on a stand.

Ordering for a shop counter

A counter display is a stock problem rather than a door problem. You need enough facings for the display to look full and enough depth behind each facing that it stays full through a weekend, and only you know your turnover.

Souvenir magnets are the usual counter product, and they are built around a ferrite disc of 3 to 5 mm set into resin, wood, or fired clay. A 20 mm disc holds 500 g on bare steel by itself, but how much of that reaches the door depends on how deep the disc sits in its well, so buy a sample of anything new and stick it to a real fridge before ordering a case. Souvenir magnets has the detail on that.

Overage, and why we will not give you a percentage

Spoilage rates are not published by any of the three sellers this site tracks, so a "add 10 percent" rule here would be a number we invented, and that is the one thing this site refuses to do.

What replaces the percentage is a list. Write down every magnet that has a person or a purpose attached, including the ones you already know you will give away on the spot, and order that number rounded up to the next price break. If the seller's break at 50 is meaningfully cheaper per magnet than 40, take the 50 and accept ten spares, which is a decision rather than a guess. Price per magnet shows how to compare those breaks once shipping and setup are inside the figure.

The one place to be generous is a run where every magnet is different, such as one photograph per household. A reprint of a single magnet costs a full production cycle and a full shipping window for one item, so the spare is worth more than it costs.

Reorder timing

Pressed photo magnet production runs 1 to 3 business days before anything ships, which is the only production figure any of the three brands publishes. Listed USA shipping is 5 to 8 days at Shutterfly and 5 to 7 at Vistaprint. Stack the worst case and a pressed order is roughly eleven days from checkout to doormat, before you allow for a weekend falling inside the business-day count.

Work backwards from the day you need them in hand, not the day you want to post them, and put the proof round in front of that. If you are ordering one sample first and then the run, you are paying that whole window twice, so start early enough that the second window is not the thing that decides your design.

For a run where the artwork is still moving, the useful question to ask a seller is when the file locks rather than when the order ships. Production of 1 to 3 business days starts at the file, not at the payment.