A franking logo envelope is an ordinary business envelope that has your branding printed onto it before it ever reaches your franking machine. The printed design sits inside a defined area on the front face, kept clear of the top right corner where the franking impression lands and clear of the seal. Get that layout right and every item you post looks like a designed brand asset rather than a blank white rectangle, without upsetting Royal Mail's sorting equipment.
If your business runs a franking machine, you are already printing on every envelope that leaves the building. The question is whether that printing does any work for you.
What is a franking logo envelope?
Franking is a pre-paid postage method where the postage mark is printed directly onto the envelope by a licensed machine, rather than being stuck on as a stamp. Royal Mail describes it as an in-house, pre-paid postage solution and specifically notes that you can include your company logo on your items as part of a professional finish.
There are two ways to get a logo onto franked mail. The first is to load a logo die or digital slug into the franking machine itself, which prints a small monochrome mark next to the postage impression. That works, but it is tiny, single-colour and constrained by the machine.
The second is to use pre-printed envelopes. Your branding goes onto the stock in full colour before the envelopes are ever loaded, so you are not limited to a postage-adjacent thumbnail, and the franking machine still does its job in the corner as normal. That is what a franking logo envelope is, and it is the approach behind our franking logo postage envelope range.
Where does the franking mark go on an envelope?
The franking impression must be printed in the top right-hand corner of the mail piece, and it must be clear, complete and legible. Modern Mailmark machines print in blue; older analogue meters printed in red. Royal Mail's guidance on preparing and posting franked mail covers the presentation rules in full, including the requirement to separate mail by destination, product and class before you post it.
The practical consequence is simple: the top right corner is not yours. Anything printed there risks the impression landing on top of your artwork, making the postage mark harder to read and the item liable to be treated as underpaid.
The four zones on a franked envelope
It helps to think of the front of a franked envelope as four separate territories, only one of which belongs to your brand:
- Top right corner - the franking zone. Reserved entirely for the postage impression. Leave it as bare, light, unprinted material.
- Centre and right of centre - the address zone. The recipient address needs high contrast and nothing printed behind it.
- The bottom band - the sorting zone. Royal Mail's automated equipment applies its own machine-readable codemarks along the bottom of a letter. Its clear addressing guidance calls for a clear border of roughly 15mm at the top, left and right and around 18mm along the bottom, with the route codemark occupying a strip up to 18mm high and 130mm in from the right edge. Keep print out of that band.
- The left and lower-left of the front face - your zone. This is where a pre-printed logo, strapline, pattern block or return-address panel belongs. It is visible the moment the envelope is handled, and it interferes with nothing.
Designing to those zones is the biggest single difference between a branded envelope that works and one that gets rejected. For the underlying artwork rules, our guide to print-ready artwork for printed envelopes covers file setup, colour and resolution.
What can actually be printed, and what cannot
We print full-colour CMYK water-based digital inkjet directly onto pre-manufactured stock envelopes, inside a defined print area, kept clear of the seal. That allows a lot, but it has real limits:
- There is no white ink. White in your artwork simply shows as the bare envelope material. On a manila or kraft envelope, a "white" logo will disappear. If your brand relies on white elements, specify white stock and let the material do the work.
- No full-bleed or edge-to-edge printing. The design sits inside the print area with an unprinted margin all round. That is a process constraint, not a design preference.
- No foiling, embossing, debossing, spot UV or metallic inks. Digital inkjet onto stock envelopes is a flat, matte process.
- Large solid blocks of colour are discouraged. Inkjet onto absorbent envelope stock tends to band and print patchily across big flood areas. Line art, outlined type and contained shapes reproduce far better.
- Colours shift on coloured stock. On manila and kraft, printed colours read warmer, muted and darker than they will on a screen. We cannot guarantee a Pantone match.
Cardboard envelopes are a partial exception, since front and rear faces can both carry print. For paper envelopes destined for a franking machine, keep to the front face and the zones above.
Which envelopes suit a franking machine?
Franking machines feed envelopes at speed, so consistent thickness, a flat seal and a clean edge matter more than they do for hand-filled post. In practice that points to a few product types:
- Printed franking logo self seal envelopes for general business post, where the flap presses closed without moisture.
- Printed franking logo gummed envelopes where a traditional moistened seal suits your mailroom process.
- Folding inserting machine envelopes if you run an automated inserter feeding into the franker.
Closure type has a real bearing on how well a run goes through a machine. Our comparison of gummed, self seal and peel and seal closures sets out the trade-offs.
Size, weight and what it costs to send
Franking pays the postage, but the envelope decides the price band. A DL or C5 envelope that stays within Royal Mail's Letter dimensions is cheaper to send than one that tips into Large Letter, and that difference repeats on every item in the run. Our guides to C4, C5, C6 and DL envelope sizes and to how envelope size affects Royal Mail postage are worth reading before you settle on a format.
Royal Mail publishes a current Mailmark franking prices wallchart, and maintains a directory of authorised franking suppliers and maintainers if you have not yet arranged a machine.
Getting the artwork right first time
Supply vector artwork or high-resolution CMYK files, not RGB. Keep type outlined and reasonably large, because fine reversed-out detail closes up on absorbent stock. Treat the material colour as part of your palette. And place the design low and left, so it reads as deliberate rather than as something the machine narrowly missed.
If you are unsure how your colours will sit on a given material, a physical sample beats any screen proof. We supply printed envelope samples for that reason.
Frequently asked questions
Can you print a logo on envelopes that will go through a franking machine?
Yes. Pre-printed branding and franking work together, provided the print stays clear of the top right corner, the address area, and the bottom band used by Royal Mail's sorting codemarks. Design low and left on the front face and there is no conflict.
Where does the franking mark go on an envelope?
In the top right-hand corner of the front face. The impression has to be clear, complete and legible, printed in blue for Mailmark machines or red for older analogue meters. Leave that corner as bare, light, unprinted material.
Can I have a white logo printed on a manila or kraft envelope?
No. Our process has no white ink, so anything white in the artwork simply shows as the bare envelope material. On manila or kraft, a white logo would be invisible. If white is essential to your brand, choose a white envelope and let the stock provide it.
Is it cheaper to print the logo on the envelope or through the franking machine?
They do different jobs. A machine logo is small, single-colour and printed free alongside the postage. A pre-printed envelope costs more per unit but gives you full-colour branding across a far larger area. Many businesses use both.
Do printed envelopes slow down a franking machine?
They should not. The printing is flat digital inkjet onto standard stock, so thickness, flatness and feed behaviour are unchanged. What genuinely affects feed speed is envelope size, closure type and how consistently the run is stacked.
What sizes are available for franking logo envelopes?
The common business formats are DL, C5 and C4. DL and C5 usually stay inside Royal Mail's Letter dimensions while C4 falls into Large Letter, so the format choice affects the postage you pay on every item.
Print your brand on every item you post
Franked mail is going out of your door anyway. Printing your brand onto the envelope attaches a marketing cost to a job you are already paying for. Browse the franking logo postage envelope range, or start at the Fast Printed Envelopes homepage to compare formats, materials and print areas.