QR codes by industry
What to actually print, where to put it, and the specific way codes fail in each trade. These are written around the physical surface the code ends up on, because that is what decides whether it scans.
restaurants
A restaurant mostly needs two codes: one for the menu and one for reviews.
real estate agents
A sign code is read from a car window, in weather, from further than you think.
plumbers, electricians and home services
Your van is a billboard that parks outside your customers’ neighbours.
retail products and packaging
Packaging is the longest-lived surface a QR code goes on, and the least editable.
events and weddings
An event code has two lives: before the event, and after it.
salons and barbershops
The best moment to ask a salon client for anything is while they are still in the chair.
churches and nonprofits
A giving code asks for money, which raises a trust bar no other QR use case has.
gyms and fitness studios
Gym codes live in humidity, get touched with wet hands, and are scanned mid-workout.
The thing every one of these has in common
Whatever the trade, the expensive mistake is the same: printing a code onto something you cannot cheaply reprint, and then losing control of where it points. That happens through a dead destination URL, or through a platform that stops resolving codes when a subscription lapses.
Use dynamic codes so the destination stays editable, point them at pages on a domain you control where you can, and check what your platform's terms say about lapsed accounts before you print anything. More on that here.
The three numbers that decide whether a code scans
Whatever the trade, the physical failures come down to the same arithmetic, and it is worth knowing before you send anything to a printer:
- Printed size versus scanning distance. A code wants to be roughly a tenth of the distance it is read from. Arm's length is 20–30mm; a yard sign read from a car at four metres wants 40cm, which is larger than most people print.
- Module size. Printed width divided by module count. Below about 0.5mm per module, phone cameras and printing processes both start to struggle — which is why a long URL on a small label fails even when the code looks generously sized.
- The quiet zone. Four modules of blank margin, every side. It is the rule designers break most often, and the one scanners depend on to find the code at all.
Our generator shows the version, module count and a recommended minimum print size for your specific code as you build it, so none of this has to be worked out by hand. The glossary explains each term properly.