Centimeter Grid Paper
Printable centimetre grid paper with true 1 cm squares, ready for 8.5 x 11 inch paper. Because the squares are a real measurement rather than a convenient fraction of the page, this is the grid to use whenever the size of a square actually matters — measuring, area, scale drawings, or anything a student will put a ruler against.
Customize this grid paper
Axes
How it prints
The page
Square grid · 1 cm · 1 sheet
Print at 100% or Actual size — not “Fit to page”, which shrinks the sheet and makes the measurements wrong.
Print It at Actual Size
This matters more here than on any other sheet on the site. Print at 100% or Actual Size. The "Fit to Page" setting most printers default to shrinks the page by roughly three percent, which turns a 1 cm square into about 9.7 mm. A student measuring that square with a ruler gets the wrong answer and has no way of knowing why.
It is worth checking once, with a ruler, the first time you print from a new printer: ten squares should measure exactly 10 cm.
Millimetre and Half-Centimetre Grids
The square size control takes millimetres as well, so the other common metric grids are a single change away. 5 mm is the usual choice for older students and for graphing; 2 mm is about as fine as paper and ink will hold without the sheet reading as solid grey. A heavier line every 5 or 10 squares makes the finer grids far easier to count across, and is how most commercial metric graph paper is printed.
For inch-based grids, see plain graph paper for quarter, fifth, eighth and tenth inch, or one inch graph paper for the large grid.
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