B5 Paper Size

The B5 is the mid-range of B formats in terms of size. Its dimensions are 250 x 176 mm or 9.84 x 6.93 inches.

Like all B sizes, B5 can’t be printed with a personal equipment, it is most often used in professional printing. B5 format is used to create menus, magazines or advertising flyers.

Its total area is 0,044 m² (0.05 square yards, 0.47 square foot, or 68.2 square inches). Its printing surface, that is to say by removing margins, is more limited.

B5 format was standardized at the same time as all other A, B and C formats, that is to say, in Germany in 1922. It was then proposed by Walter Portsmann that ratio √2 could be the ratio between length and width, so that length = width x √2 (1.4142 = (a / b = 2b / a = √ 2)). DIN (German Institute for Standards) applied this ratio to B0 to B10 formats (DIN 476). The latter gave birth in 1975 to the international standard ISO 216.

The B5 is ½ a B4 or ¼ a B3 for larger sizes, and 2 B6 sheets, or 4 B7 sheets, for inferior sizes. The ratio between these formats is always maintained, so that the content does not change when reducing or enlarging (eg printing or copying). If B5 is folded in its width we obtain a B6, and a B5 size is obtained by folding a B4 paper in its width.

You can get the weight of a sheet of B5 paper comparing its area (0.044 m²) to chosen paper weight. For paper of 100 g/m², we will then calculate: 100 x 0.044: 4.4 grams per sheet.