QR Code Generator with Logo

How to add a logo

Enter the destination, generate the code, then open the Logo tab and click “Add or Manage” to pick a file from your device. A square PNG with a transparent or white background works best; a wide logo has to be scaled down so far that it stops being legible anyway.

Keep the logo centred. The centre is the only part of a QR code with no structural role — the corners hold the finder patterns and the edges carry timing and format information. A logo drifting toward a corner does far more damage than the same logo in the middle.

The download is a 1024-pixel PNG, which prints cleanly up to about 8 cm at 300 dpi. For anything larger, generate the code at the size you will print it rather than enlarging the file afterwards — an enlarged raster softens the module edges, and soft edges are what scanners fail on.

How much can a logo actually cover?

Almost every guide answers this with the error correction levels — L, M, Q and H recover roughly 7%, 15%, 25% and 30% of a damaged symbol — and then says you can cover 30% of the code at level H. That is a misreading, and it is why codes that "should work" fail in print.

Those percentages describe recoverable codewords, not paintable area. Error correction is designed for scattered damage: a scratch, a smudge, a torn corner. A logo is contiguous damage in one place, which is the hardest case for the algorithm, so the usable figure is well below the headline number. In practice, keeping the logo under about 15% of the code area is safe at level H, and going past 20% is where failures start appearing on older phones first.

One thing no error correction level can save: the three large squares in the corners. Those are the finder patterns a scanner uses to locate the code at all. Cover one and the code is not damaged, it is invisible — the scanner never finds a symbol to correct.

And raising the level is not free. Higher error correction consumes capacity, so at the same content length it pushes the code to a denser version with more modules. A shorter destination buys you more logo room than any setting does.

Contrast, colour, and the proof you have to print

A logo with a light background inside a dark code reads fine. A logo with a dark background sitting on the code's light modules is where scanning breaks, because the scanner can no longer tell module from gap. If your logo is dark, put it on a small white pad.

The same applies to brand colours in the pattern itself. Scanners want a dark pattern on a light background; inverting that, or using two mid-tone brand colours, produces something that looks right on a screen and fails on a phone in a shop. Gradients across the pattern lower contrast unevenly — if you want the brand look, put the gradient in the frame around the code.

Then print a proof and scan it with more than one phone. A logo code that works on your own recent handset can fail on a three-year-old Android, and that is the phone your customer is holding. This is the only test that counts, and it takes two minutes.

Frequently asked questions