Printing
Printing Worksheets at Home Without Wasting Ink
Free printables stop being free somewhere around the third ink cartridge. Most of the waste comes from a handful of default settings, and the fixes take a few seconds each. This applies to worksheets and coloring pages from anywhere, not only from here.
5 min read Updated
Scaling: the setting that ruins tracing pages
Print dialogs default to a scaling option that shrinks the page slightly to fit the printer's margins. On a photo this is invisible. On a tracing worksheet it makes the letter smaller than intended, which matters when the size was chosen for a specific hand.
Choose Actual Size or 100% where the file matches your paper. Choose Fit to Page only when it does not, which for most of the world means printing a US Letter file onto A4. The two are close enough that fitting works cleanly; nothing important gets cut.
Grayscale and draft mode
Line-art pages contain no color, but many printers will still mix color inks to produce black unless told otherwise. Selecting grayscale or black-and-white explicitly avoids that, and on a page of pure line art there is no visible difference.
Draft or economy mode roughly halves ink use. On a page that a child is about to cover in crayon, draft quality is entirely adequate. Save the good setting for something going on the wall.
Paper, and when it matters
Standard copier paper is fine for pencils and crayons. It is not fine for markers, which bleed through and leave the page underneath ruined too.
If a child is using markers, heavier paper is worth it, or slide a spare sheet underneath as a barrier. For very young children who press hard, heavier paper also stops the page tearing, which prevents a small disaster halfway through.
Print one before you print thirty
Always print a single test copy first. Margins, scaling, and paper size interact differently on every printer, and finding out after thirty copies is an expensive way to learn.
Check that nothing is cut off at the edges and that the line weight looks right, then run the rest.
Reusing instead of reprinting
For anything repetitive, particularly tracing, a clear plastic sleeve and a dry-erase marker turn one printed page into an unlimited number of attempts.
This is the single biggest saving available. A child working on one difficult letter might do it twenty times in a week, and that is twenty sheets or one.
A note on A4 and US Letter
US Letter is slightly wider and shorter than A4. A file built for one prints on the other without trouble as long as scaling is set to fit, and any well-made printable leaves enough margin for this.
The pages on this site are built for US Letter and are designed with enough margin that A4 printing loses nothing.
Common questions
Why does my printable come out too small?
The print dialog is almost certainly set to Fit to Page or Shrink to Fit. Change it to Actual Size or 100% when your paper matches the file's size.
Can I print US Letter files on A4 paper?
Yes. Choose Fit to Page in the print dialog. The two sizes are close enough that nothing important is lost, and well-made printables leave margin for it.
How do I stop my printer using color ink on black-and-white pages?
Select grayscale or black-and-white explicitly in the print dialog rather than relying on the file being colorless. Many printers otherwise mix color inks to produce black.