Card size and dimensions?

Hello everyone,
I'm contemplating the creation of my own deck and was wondering about how large the cards should be.
This is for the purposes of ease of use in shuffling etc, and also to find out how much detail I should put in the paintings before making them.
I don't want to lose time and effort on something that maybe lost when the images are reduced.

The planned deck will be medieval in style and in keeping with this, probably in the form of a double squared rectangle, (that is to say, twice as high as they are wide) with the cards name and number carried on a scroll within the image.
But this could be changed if too many are adverse to using cards of these dimensions.

I find that 2.5"x4.5" to 2.75"x4.75" is the most comfortable size for my hands, but it's the height/longest dimension that's most important for me.

Are you doing a full 78 card deck, or just the 22 Trumps? You could, I think, get away with a slightly larger dimension with a trumps-only since there's less cards to shuffle.

Illy

The plan is to make a full set of 78 cards, all them (where's the screaming icon?) painted in oils on copper plate panels.
It will take me a while to do, so I want to avoid making too many mistakes.

Thanks for your reply.

Oh, goodness, you are courageous!! Good luck! I hope you'll post some of the first few paintings as they're done!