How to Print Coloring Pages
Printing a coloring page badly is easy to do by accident. Three settings cause almost every problem. Get those right and the rest takes care of itself.
1. Print at 100%, not "fit to page"
This is the big one. "Fit to page" (sometimes called "shrink to fit") scales the artwork down by a few percent and leaves an uneven white border. Our PDFs are already sized for the paper, so set the scale to 100% or Actual size and the page will land correctly.
2. Pick the right paper size
Every page here comes in two versions. Use Letter in the US and Canada, and A4 almost everywhere else. Printing an A4 file on Letter paper (or the reverse) is the second most common cause of clipped edges.
3. Choose the right paper
| Colouring with | Use |
|---|---|
| Crayons, coloured pencils | Ordinary 80gsm copier paper is fine |
| Felt tips, markers | 120gsm+ cardstock, or the ink bleeds through |
| Watercolour or gel pens | Watercolour paper or 200gsm card |
If you only have thin paper and are using markers, slide a spare sheet underneath. It will not stop the bleed, but it protects whatever is below.
Saving ink
Our pages are pure black line art on white, so they use very little ink already. If your printer offers Grayscale or Black & white, select it — that stops colour cartridges being used to mix a black that is already black. Draft quality also works fine for line art.
Still not right?
- Edges cut off — scaling is not at 100%, or the paper size does not match the file.
- Faint or streaky lines — usually a low cartridge or a clogged head, not the file.
- A grey box behind the drawing — your viewer is printing a background. Open the PDF in a different reader and try again.
If none of that helps, let us know which page and which printer, and we will take a look.