Quiet Zones
“The Quiet Zones for linear barcodes are the solid, light areas before the first bar and after the last bar. For two-dimensional barcodes, the Quiet Zone is the light area around the barcode.” GS1
This is the piece of the barcode that tells the barcode scanner where the barcode starts and finishes. This prevents the barcode reader from scanning any information that is not part of the barcode symbology. If these quiet zones are damaged or reduced the scanner will probably have difficulties in scanning the code.
For example a ‘Code 128’ barcode will have six sections:
- Quiet Zone
- Start Character
- Encoded Data
- Check Character
- Stop Character
- Quiet Zone
The area needed for the Quiet Zones depends on the size of the barcode, as a general rule this should be ten times the ‘X dimension,’ which is the narrowest bar or space on the barcode. GS1 recommend allowing slightly more than this minimum requirement to allow for any possible ink spread or registration issue.