How to print a coloring page properly

Every drawing on this site is a 300 dpi PDF composed for A4. That is enough resolution that the print quality depends entirely on what happens between the file and the paper. Here is what actually matters, in the order it matters.

1. Print the PDF, not the screen

Printing the web page prints a compressed preview, plus whatever the browser decides to put in the margins. Take the PDF from the sheet you want and open that instead. It is one extra click and it is the single biggest difference in the finished result.

2. Set the scale to 100 %

In the print dialog, look for Scale and set it to “Actual size” or 100 %. The default in most browsers is “Fit to page”, which shrinks the artwork by three or four percent and leaves an uneven margin. If you are printing A4 artwork on US Letter, use “Fit to printable area” instead, which is the one case where fitting is correct.

3. Turn off draft mode

A coloring page is nothing but black line. Draft mode and toner-saving settings thin those lines into grey, and a grey line is much harder for a child to stay inside. Normal quality is enough; you do not need Photo.

4. Choose paper for the medium

• Crayons and colored pencils: ordinary 80 gsm copy paper is fine.
• Felt tips and markers: 120 gsm or heavier, or the ink bleeds through.
• Watercolour pencils or paint: 200 gsm minimum, or the sheet buckles.
• Anything being cut out or hung up: 160 gsm card stock.

5. Print several at once

Nobody prints one coloring page. Open several PDFs, then use your printer's “multiple” setting to run them in one job. It saves the warm-up cycle and, on an inkjet, a surprising amount of ink. For small cards, set 2 or 4 pages per sheet and cut them apart afterwards.

Printing for a class

If you are running off thirty copies, print one first and look at it. Check that the thinnest lines are solid black and that nothing is clipped at the edge. Thirty bad copies take the same twenty minutes as thirty good ones.

For a mixed-age group, print two or three different sheets from the same category rather than one sheet thirty times. The category index shows how many sheets each drawer holds, and most have a mix of thick-outline and detailed pages.

No printer at home

The PDFs are ordinary files. Any print shop, library or supermarket photo counter will print them from a USB stick or an email, usually for a few cents a page in black and white. Ask for 120 gsm if markers are involved.