Fear of burning through ink stops a lot of families from printing at all. Good news: a coloring page is the cheapest kind of file there is to print, if you change three settings.
The three settings that matter
- Greyscale (or «black ink only»). The page is already black and white, but by default many printers mix the color cartridges to make black. Choosing greyscale saves the color cartridges, which are the expensive ones.
- Draft quality. For thick black lines, «draft» and «high quality» look practically identical on paper. The difference is in consumption, which drops a lot.
- Fit to page. This is what stops the sheet coming out cropped and prevents a reprint, which is the real waste.
Which paper to use
Standard 75gsm copy paper is fine for colored pencils and crayons. If your child uses markers, poster paint, or watercolor, a pack of 120gsm is worth it: it won't wrinkle or bleed through. Recycled paper also works well and costs less, the slightly cream tone doesn't hurt the drawing.
Tricks that save
Print in batches of five or six, because printers spend ink on a cleaning cycle every time they wake up. Use the back of sheets already printed on one side. And if the printer sits unused for weeks the cartridge dries out, so printing occasionally actually saves money.
No printer?
Copy shops usually charge pennies per black-and-white page. Take the files on a USB stick or email them and print ten at once, the per-page cost drops and it's the same trip.
Where to download at the right size
The 239 Dogavios pages are at print resolution, so they come out sharp on A4 or Letter with no scaling up. Pick, download, print.
