Free Plumbing Brochure Template

Build and download a free plumbing tri-fold brochure. You write six panels in reading order — front cover, the inside spread, the back cover and the tucked flap — and the builder maps them to the print order on a real letter tri-fold sheet: 11 by 8.5 inches landscape, unequal panel widths so the flap folds flat, fold guides on the PDF, and a character budget per panel so nothing oversets. It also checks the licence-number-on-advertising rule for the states whose statutes are verified. PDF, Word or Excel.

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Plumbing tri-fold brochure

Write six panels in reading order; it prints them in press order.

Layout

Colour

Font

Details

1Company & brandingName, logo, and the contact details that print on the back cover.
2Fold layout & panel budgetAuto-calculatedWhere each panel prints, how wide it is, and how much copy it holds.

Outside of sheet — page 1

Left to right: Inside flap · Back cover · Front cover

Folds at 3.625" and 7.3125" from the left edge

Inside of sheet — page 2

Left to right: Inside left · Inside centre · Inside right

Folds at 3.6875" and 7.375" from the left edge

Panel (reading order)PrintsWidthCopy used
1. Front coverOutside, panel 3 of 33.6875"2/32 lines · 60/1440 chars
2. Inside leftInside, panel 1 of 33.6875"2/27 lines · 79/1215 chars
3. Inside centreInside, panel 2 of 33.6875"7/31 lines · 173/1395 chars
4. Inside rightInside, panel 3 of 33.625"2/31 lines · 62/1395 chars
5. Back coverOutside, panel 2 of 33.6875"0/34 lines · 0/1530 chars
6. Inside flapOutside, panel 1 of 33.625"6/34 lines · 170/1530 chars

Print duplex, flip on the short edge, then fold on the guides — the narrow flap folds in first. Both PDF pages carry the 0.125" bleed edge and 0.25" safe margins.

3Front coverThe only panel anyone sees before deciding to open it.

Bullets (optional)

    4Inside panelsThe flap a reader meets first, then the three-panel spread.
    Inside flap6/34 lines

    Bullets (optional)

    Inside left2/27 lines

    Bullets (optional)

      Inside centre7/31 lines

      Bullets (optional)

      Inside right2/31 lines

      Bullets (optional)

        5Services & credentialsPrints on the inside-left and inside-right panels.
        Drain cleaning & hydro-jettingWater heaters & tanklessLeak detection & repairRepipingSewer line repair & liningEmergency service
        Master plumber on staffBackflow tester certified
        6OfferOne deal, printed on the inside centre panel.
        7Back cover & compliance reviewContact panel, the claims you are making, and the graded findings.

        Bullets (optional)

          Review — worst first

          RiskPick the state you are licensed inSeveral states require a contractor licence number on all advertising, and a brochure is advertising. Until a state is chosen this review cannot tell you whether yours is one of them.
          RiskNo licence number enteredEnter it even if your state does not compel it — a brochure that claims you are licensed without printing the number is the claim regulators look at first.
          AdviceOffer has no expiry dateA brochure outlives a flyer — it sits in racks for months. An offer with no end date is one you are still on the hook for.
          AdviceOffer has no terms lineState what it applies to and what it excludes, on the same panel as the offer.
          8DownloadTwo landscape pages with fold guides — page 1 outside, page 2 inside.

          Free · no signup · prints on one landscape US Letter sheet, duplex

          What's included

          • A real letter tri-fold panel model: 11 x 8.5 in landscape, four panel faces at 3.6875 in and two at 3.625 in — not equal thirds
          • Reading-order authoring mapped to print order automatically, so the outside sheet comes out as flap, back cover, front cover and the inside sheet as the three inner panels
          • Dashed fold guides printed on both PDF pages at the real fold positions — 3.625 and 7.3125 in on the outside, 3.6875 and 7.375 in on the inside
          • 0.125 in bleed and 0.25 in safe margins marked, so nothing important is folded through or trimmed off
          • A per-panel character and line budget derived from the panel geometry, with an overset flag on any panel whose copy will not fit
          • A licence-number-on-advertising check for California, Florida, Texas, with the statute cited — and an honest "not evaluated" for every state whose rule is not verified here
          • A placement check for the licence number, because a number that is not assigned to a panel does not print
          • A flag on an unqualified "Licensed, Bonded & Insured" line when the licence number, insurer or bond amount is missing
          • FTC checks on guarantee claims with no terms, unattributed testimonials, undisclosed paid testimonials, and before/after results imagery
          • Services, credentials, certifications and one offer with its expiry and terms
          • A plain website URL — no QR code, on purpose
          • Two-page print-ready PDF plus Word (.docx) and Excel (.xlsx) exports
          • Blank fields never print as dashes — a row you did not fill in simply does not appear

          How to use this template

          1. 1

            Start with your company details and logo

            Name, phone, plain website URL, service area and licence number. The website prints as typed — there is deliberately no QR code, because a brochure that needs a phone to be useful is a brochure nobody uses in a rack.

          2. 2

            Read the fold layout before you write a word

            The builder shows you the real geometry: an 11 by 8.5 inch landscape sheet, two of the six panel faces at 3.625 inches and four at 3.6875 inches, folds at 3.625 and 7.3125 inches on the outside and 3.6875 and 7.375 on the inside. It also gives each panel a character budget, so you know before you type how much copy that panel can hold.

          3. 3

            Write the front cover as one promise

            It is the only panel anyone sees before deciding whether to open the brochure. A heading, one short line, no bullet list. Everything you are tempted to put here belongs on the inside spread.

          4. 4

            Fill the four inside panels in reading order

            Front cover, inside left, inside centre, inside right, back cover, and the tucked flap. You author them in that order; the exporter re-orders them for the press. The tucked flap is the narrow one and it is the first panel a reader meets after the cover, so it is worth more than a "thank you".

          5. 5

            Add services and credentials

            Services as short noun phrases, not sentences. Credentials as things a reader can check: licence number, named insurance carrier, bond amount, years in business, certifications. If you switch on the "Licensed, Bonded & Insured" line and any of those three is blank, the review says so.

          6. 6

            Set the offer, then read the compliance review

            Pick the state you are licensed in. The review grades the licence-number rules for California, Florida, Texas and prints "not evaluated — check your state board" for the rest rather than guessing. It also flags a guarantee with no terms, an unattributed or undisclosed paid testimonial, before/after imagery, and any panel whose copy will overset.

          7. 7

            Export and check the fold guides

            The PDF is two landscape pages — page one is the outside of the sheet, page two the inside — with dashed fold guides and the 0.125 inch bleed and 0.25 inch safe margins marked. Print it duplex, flip on the short edge, and fold on the guides. Word and Excel exports carry the same content in panel order.

          A tri-fold is not three equal panels, and that is why yours came back wrong

          The single most common way a contractor brochure gets printed wrong is the assumption that a tri-fold is three equal thirds. It is not. On an 11 by 8.5 inch landscape sheet, equal thirds would be 3.6667 inches. Commercial printers publish something different: four of the six panel faces at 3.6875 inches and two at 3.625 inches. Those two narrow faces are the front and back of one physical panel — the one that folds in first. On a roll fold that panel gets wrapped by the other two, and if it is the same width as them its edge pushes against the folded spine and the whole piece buckles. One sixteenth of an inch of relief is what makes it fold flat. This builder encodes the printer's panel widths rather than dividing by three, and prints the fold guides at 3.625 and 7.3125 inches on the outside of the sheet.

          The second trap is the order. You write a brochure the way it is read, but a press prints one side of a sheet at a time, and the two orders are not the same. The outside of the sheet carries, left to right, the tucked flap, the back cover and the front cover. The inside carries the three inner panels in order. That is why the flap is called the inside flap even though it is printed on the outside: it is still folded in when you open the cover, so it is the first panel a reader meets on the inside. Its reverse face is the inside-right panel, which is why inside-right is the narrow one on the inside sheet. Get this mapping wrong in a page-layout program and you get a brochure whose back cover is where the flap should be — which is usually discovered after the print run. Here you never touch it: you author the six panels in reading order and the exporter does the mapping.

          The third trap is copy that does not fit. A panel is about three and a quarter inches of usable width once you hold the printer's 0.25 inch safe margin off each edge, and roughly eight inches of usable height. At ten point body copy on fourteen point leading that is about 45 characters per line and 34 lines under a heading — a little over 1,500 characters per panel. Most people write two or three times that into the inside centre panel, and it looks fine on screen because a screen has no bottom edge. The builder wraps your actual copy at the actual column width, counts the lines, and flags the panel as overset with the number of characters to cut. That is the check "it looked fine on screen" exists to replace.

          The fourth trap is legal, and no competitor brochure template mentions it. Several states require a contractor's licence number to appear on all advertising, and a brochure is advertising. California requires the number in all forms of advertising under Business and Professions Code section 7030.5, with the board's own rule requiring it be legible and unabbreviated. Florida requires the certification or registration number in each offer of services, proposal, bid, contract or advertisement, regardless of medium. Texas requires an electrical contracting company's advertising to carry both the company name and the licence number. Those three are the ones read and cited in this builder. For any other state it prints "not evaluated — check your state board" rather than inventing a verdict, because there is no authoritative fifty-state table to copy from. It also checks placement, since a number sitting in a form field and not assigned to a panel does not print at all.

          The last set of checks are the claims. An unqualified "Licensed, Bonded & Insured" line is the most-printed sentence in this trade and the least substantiated one: the builder flags it when the licence number, the insurance carrier or the bond amount is missing, since those are the three things that make it checkable. A guarantee headline with no terms gets flagged too — the FTC's warranty advertising guides say an advertisement mentioning a warranty should disclose that a buyer can see the written warranty for complete details before purchase, and "satisfaction guaranteed" represents a full refund on request. Testimonials get the FTC endorsement guides applied: the quote must reflect the endorser's honest experience, a material connection such as payment, a discount or free work must be disclosed clearly in the same advertisement, and before/after results imagery is read as typical unless you say otherwise. Your front cover should still be one plain sentence about plumbing that holds, not a list of fixtures — none of this is a reason to write a legal notice on it.

          A plumbing brochure is a leave-behind for the job that is already done and the one nobody has called about yet. Property managers keep them in a folder; homeowners keep them on the fridge. Put the emergency line and the licence number where they can be seen without unfolding anything.

          Related templates

          More free downloads for your PLUMBING template library.

          Brochure Template FAQs

          What are the correct panel sizes for an 8.5 x 11 tri-fold brochure?

          Not thirds. On a flat sheet of 11 by 8.5 inches, commercial printers publish four panel faces at 3.6875 inches and two at 3.625 inches, giving a final folded size of 3.6875 by 8.5 inches. The two narrow faces are the front and back of the one panel that tucks inside, and the sixteenth of an inch it gives up is what lets it fold flat instead of pushing against the spine. Fold positions measured from the left edge are 3.625 and 7.3125 inches on the outside of the sheet, and 3.6875 and 7.375 on the inside, because the inside is the mirror image of the outside.

          On the outside of the sheet, left to right: the tucked flap, the back cover, then the front cover on the far right. The inside of the sheet carries the three inner panels in the order they are read. If you lay the front cover out on the left of the outside sheet — which is the intuitive thing to do — you get a brochure that opens backwards. This builder does the mapping for you: you write the panels in reading order and the exporter places them.

          It is the narrow panel that folds in first. It is printed on the outside of the sheet but read on the inside, because it is still folded over when a reader opens the front cover — so it is the first thing they see after the cover, before the full spread. Most contractor brochures waste it on a logo or a thank-you. It is the right place for the two or three reasons someone should keep reading: flat-rate pricing, licensed technicians, no overtime charges. Keep the copy shortest here, since it is the narrow panel.

          About 1,500 characters of body copy under a heading. That comes out of the geometry rather than a rule of thumb: a panel is 3.6875 inches wide, the printer's safe margin holds copy 0.25 inches off each edge, and what is left at ten point type on fourteen point leading is roughly 45 characters across and 34 lines down once you reserve space for the panel heading. The builder counts your actual wrapped lines against that and tells you which panel to cut and by how much, which is more useful than a word count because a bullet list costs a whole line per bullet.

          In some states, yes, and a brochure counts as advertising. California requires a licensee to include the licence number in all forms of advertising under Business and Professions Code section 7030.5, and the board's rule requires it be legible and unabbreviated. Florida requires the certification or registration number in each offer of services, business proposal, bid, contract or advertisement regardless of medium. Texas requires an electrical contracting company's soliciting advertising to include both the company name and the licence number. Those three are graded here with the statute cited. For any other state this builder prints "not evaluated — check your state board" instead of guessing, and you should ask your board directly — it is a citable offence in the states that require it.

          No state board publishes a required panel, so this builder treats placement as a recommendation rather than a rule and says so on the finding. The practical answer is the back cover: it is the panel that faces up in a rack and on a mailed brochure, so a number there is the easiest to point at if anyone asks. What is not optional is that it prints at all — the builder flags a licence number that has been entered but never assigned to a panel, which is the failure mode of every template that keeps company details in a separate block from the layout.

          Yes, with two conditions the FTC endorsement guides set out. The quote has to reflect the endorser's honest opinions or experience, and you need to be able to show that it does — which in practice means it is attributable to a real customer rather than floating unattributed. And if there is a material connection between you and them, such as payment, a discount, free work, employment or a family relationship, it has to be disclosed clearly and conspicuously in the same brochure. Before-and-after photos carry a third condition: results shown are read as typical, so if the pictured outcome is not what a normal customer gets, say what is.

          The PDF is two landscape US Letter pages at 11 by 8.5 inches. Page one is the outside of the sheet, page two the inside. Print duplex, flipping on the short edge, on one sheet of paper, then fold on the dashed guides — the narrow flap folds in first, then the front cover folds over it. Both pages carry the 0.125 inch bleed edge and the 0.25 inch safe margins so a commercial printer can work from the same file. If you are sending it to a print shop, tell them it is a Plumbing letter tri-fold, roll fold, and they will recognise the panel widths.

          Your brochure gets read. Larry answers the phone it prints.

          We will run your numbers on the call and tell you if the maths does not work for a shop your size. That happens, and it is a cheaper conversation than finding out three months in.

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