We study the dynamics of protein adsorption using nm – mm scale patterns involving hydrophobic domains in hydrophilic matrices. We report the discovery of a critical requirement on the sizes of adhesive pads for protein adsorption: the area of each adhesive pad must be more than two orders of magnitude larger than the footprint of a protein molecule before irreversible adsorption occurs . We attribute this to the minimal surface area sampled by a mobile protein molecule in a precursor state before irreversible adsorption occurs.