How to Change Mat Size in Cricut Design Space 

You may have landed here because you have asked yourself – how do I change the mat size in circuit design space? You are in the right place because this blog will teach you how to change mat size in Cricut Design Space. We are specifically covering the Cricut Explore and Maker machines in this post.

When making projects with the Cricut machines, you sometimes may find that you need different size mats for different projects. This is because your project may be bigger or smaller. Cricut Explore and Cricut Maker machines use either 12×12 or 12×24 mats. There is a whole blog post here on all the different types of mats, sizes, and grips that you should read if you do not know much about the Cricut mats. 

For a really simple explanation, you can check out this short Youtube video on changing mat sizes. 

How to change the mat size on circuit design space

This post is going to cover how to change mat size on Cricut Explore Air 2. If you need a different mat size, there are two ways to change it. You can either change the material size of your project or the image size of your project.

How to change material size on Cricut

This is how to change the material size in Cricut Design Space. Once you have completed your project and are ready to “make it”, you will first be prompted to look at your project in the “Project Preview Screen”. When you are on this screen, there are several options for adjustments that you can make including changing the material size. 

If you choose a material size larger than the standard 12×12 mat, then Design Space will automatically change your mat size to the larger option (12×24).

I did want to offer an explanation for the beginner on mats vs. material because I think it can be a tad confusing. Let’s pretend we are making a pizza. The mat is the pan that goes into the oven and the material would be the pizza that goes on top of the pan (a.k.a mat). So when we are telling Cricut Design Space that we have materials that are larger than the mat, like a pizza that is larger than the pan, it is going to automatically choose the mat size that fits.  

Changing the image size on Cricut

This is how to change the image size in Cricut Design Space. When you go to make your project by clicking the “make it” button if your project is larger than the standard 12×12 mat you will automatically be prompted to either switch to a larger mat size or re-size your image to be smaller. 

You should note that a 12×12 mat does not mean you actually have the entire 12×12 space. Cricut allows cuts up to 11.5×11.5 so that it can fully cut the image. Those are the two basic ways for how to change mat size on Cricut. 

How to change paper size on Cricut

Here is how to set paper size on Cricut. Another popular question that is often asked when sizing projects is how to change paper size in Cricut Design Space. This is basically the same process as noted above under the material section. Paper is a type of material, so no matter what material you are using (whether it be paper or vinyl), you can adjust the size of the material in the Project Preview Screen. 

That is all for this blog post. As you can see, it is not terribly difficult to change mat sizes with the Cricut machines. It is definitely an easy beginner skill to learn. I hope this blog helped you to learn how to change mat size in Cricut Design Space!