96 Well Plate Template
Use this 96 well plate template to plan where every sample, standard, control and blank goes before you pipette. Select wells on the plate map, give them a group color and numbered labels, then export an Excel sheet, a printable PDF or a PNG to take to the bench. It runs in your browser and costs no credits.
Click a well, or drag across wells to select a block. Click a row letter or column number to select the whole line; hold Shift to add lines or extend from the last well, Ctrl or Cmd to add single wells.
Your plate is kept in this browser until you reset it. Nothing is uploaded.
Fill Your 96 Well Plate Template Online
A paper grid is fine until the layout changes. Here you can move a dilution series, swap controls or add a replicate in seconds, and the labels renumber the way you ask. Fill whole columns for a standard curve, use triplicates for samples, and keep blanks and no-template controls in their own colors so nobody loads the wrong well. In short, it is a 96 well plate map template you can rearrange as often as the experiment changes.
96 Well Plate Template Editable Online
Every well holds a short label and a group. Rename groups to match your assay, pick their colors, and refill any block of wells without starting over. Numbering can run across rows or down columns, with duplicates or triplicates sharing one number.
96 Well Plate Template Excel Export
The Excel file has two sheets: a colored 8 × 12 grid that looks like the plate, and a long list with one row per well (well, row, column, label, group) that you can paste into a plate reader or qPCR run setup. CSV gives the same list as plain text.
Printable 96 Well Plate Template PDF
The PDF is an A4 landscape page with large wells, labels and a color legend, sized to read at arm’s length on the bench. Need a blank grid to write on by hand instead? Use Blank PDF for an empty plate with every well numbered.
96 Well Plate Format and Dimensions
A standard 96-well microplate has 8 rows labeled A to H and 12 columns numbered 1 to 12, so wells run from A1 at the top left to H12 at the bottom right. The outer dimensions are set by ANSI/SLAS standards so that plates fit readers, washers and robots; well shape and volume vary by manufacturer and product.
| Item | Value |
|---|---|
| Layout | 8 rows (A–H) × 12 columns (1–12) = 96 wells; A1 is the top-left well, usually marked by a cut corner on the plate. |
| Footprint | 127.76 × 85.48 mm (ANSI/SLAS 1-2004). |
| Plate height | 14.35 mm (ANSI/SLAS 2-2004); deep-well and PCR plates differ. |
| Well-to-well spacing | 9 mm between well centers (ANSI/SLAS 4-2004), the same pitch as an 8- or 12-channel pipette. |
| Well volume | About 360 µL total and 75–200 µL working volume for a flat-bottom cell culture plate such as Corning 3599. |
| Well diameter | About 6.4 mm for that plate; round, V and U bottoms change the usable volume. |
Row Letters and Column Numbers
Well names combine the row letter and column number, so C7 is the third row, seventh column. Plate readers, qPCR software and LIMS all use this format, which is why the Excel and CSV exports list wells the same way.
Bottom Shapes and Volumes
Flat bottoms suit absorbance and microscopy, round (U) bottoms suit cell aggregates and mixing, and V bottoms help recover small volumes. Thin-walled PCR plates use much smaller reaction volumes, commonly 10–50 µL.
Plate Materials
Polystyrene is the most common material and gives clear optics for ELISA and cell culture. Polypropylene handles heat and solvents, so it is used for PCR and storage, while cyclo-olefin plates transmit near-UV light. Color matters too: black plates reduce crosstalk in fluorescence assays, and white plates reflect light to strengthen luminescence signals.
How to Plan a Plate in 3 Steps
A typical ELISA, qPCR or cell-viability layout takes a couple of minutes.
Set up groups
Name the plate, then rename the groups (samples, standards, controls, blanks) and choose their colors.
Select and fill wells
Drag across a block of wells, pick a group, type a label prefix, choose replicates and direction, and fill. Repeat for each part of the layout.
Export and print
Download Excel for your records or instrument, the PDF to print for the bench, or a PNG for your lab notebook or slides.
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