Free ladder SVG files

All rails and rungs

A ladder is nothing but thin bars, so the width of those bars decides how small it can be cut. On the wooden ladder the rails are about 3.5 mm wide and the rungs about 3 mm when the ladder is 100 mm tall, and every rung passes right through both rails, which makes each joint as strong as the rail itself. That cuts cleanly in vinyl from 70 mm and in card from 100 mm.

For plywood and acrylic, cut a ladder at 150 mm or taller, and take the waste out of the gaps between the rungs before you lift the ladder itself. The step ladder has flat treads over 4 mm deep at 100 mm and is the sturdier choice for small sizes.

Trades, tree houses and paper scenes

Ladders are cut for the vans and shirts of painters, roofers and window cleaners, for fire service gifts, for apple picking days and for children’s rooms. The ladder against a wall, the ladder in an apple tree, the tree house and the ladder shelf all stand on a strip of ground with a straight underside, so each can be glued upright by a tab as one layer of a paper scene or a shadow box.

How to open the files

• Cricut Design Space: choose Upload, pick the SVG, and add it to the canvas. Set the width you want; the shape is already welded.
• Silhouette Studio: Designer Edition and above open the SVG. The free Basic Edition does not, so open the DXF instead.
• LightBurn, xTool Creative Space and Glowforge: import the SVG, then set the layer to cut, score or engrave.
• Inkscape, Illustrator and Affinity: open the SVG. It is a plain filled path, so you can recolour it, add a stroke or combine it with your own work.
• Printing or sublimation: use the PNG, which has a transparent background.

Each design page lists the file’s narrowest part at seven sizes, so you can tell whether it will survive at the size you plan to cut.

Questions