How to Add a Watermark to a PDF
Watermarking is common for marking drafts, protecting confidential documents, or stamping a logo across every page — but get the settings wrong and the watermark does more harm than the thing it's protecting.
Text or image
A text watermark — 'DRAFT,' 'CONFIDENTIAL' — is quick and works fine for internal use. An image watermark, like a logo, takes more setup but looks more polished for anything client-facing.
Opacity is where people mess up
Leave it too high and the underlying text becomes hard to read. Somewhere around 10-20% is usually visible enough without fighting the actual content, especially on text-heavy pages.
Placement and angle
A diagonal watermark across the center is the standard for a reason — hard to crop out, doesn't sit on top of any one line of text. A corner placement is easier to read past, but also easier to just crop off.
Not every page needs one
Some tools let you watermark just the cover page, or skip pages that are blank or purely images. Handy if you want part of the document to look finished and part to clearly read as a draft.
