How to print coloring pages that look crisp, not gray

The best way to print coloring pages is simple: print one page per sheet, at actual size or "fit to page", in black only, on paper heavy enough for whatever your kids color with. Most gray, blotchy pages come from two things, a file with soft gray lines, or a printer told to print in color or photo mode. Fix those and an ordinary home inkjet or laser printer makes pages that look as crisp as a store-bought book.

When I printed the first pages for my daughter, the settings mattered more than the printer. Here is the short version.

The five settings that matter

Every print dialog looks a little different, but these five settings exist almost everywhere, sometimes behind a button labeled Properties, Preferences, More settings or Show details.

Setting	Choose	Why
Color	Black and white, Grayscale or Black ink only	Stops the printer mixing colored inks into a muddy black
Quality	Normal or Standard	Draft can fade lines. Best or Photo floods the page with ink
Paper type	Plain paper (or Cardstock if you loaded it)	Photo paper settings lay down too much ink for coloring
Scale	Fit to page, or Actual size / 100%	Avoids cropped edges or tiny, shrunken drawings
Sides	One-sided	Markers bleed through, so the back page gets ruined

Scale is the one that bites. A page designed for US Letter usually prints well at Actual size. If the edges get cut off, switch to Fit to page. If a drawing comes out shrunken in the middle of the sheet, the file is probably small or has a big white border, so try Fit or a custom scale.

Print coloring pages from a phone

You do not need a computer.

iPhone and iPad. If your printer supports AirPrint and is on the same Wi-Fi network, Apple's AirPrint instructions are: open the app, tap the Share button, tap Print, choose the printer, set copies and options, then tap Print. The iPhone User Guide adds that you can check or cancel a job from Print Center in the App Switcher. Not every app offers Print, so if it is missing, save the page to Files or Photos and print from there.

Android. The Mopria Alliance explains that printing is built into Android: open the app, look for Print in the app menu or the share menu, select a nearby printer, and tap print. Most phones already have a Mopria-powered print service, and if yours cannot find the printer, the free Mopria Print Service app from Google Play adds one.

On either phone, open the options before you tap Print and look for black and white, paper size (Letter in the US) and scaling. Phone print screens hide these behind a small arrow or "More settings".

No printer at home? Libraries, office supply stores and shipping stores print from a USB stick, an email or an upload, usually for a small per-page fee. Ask for black and white, one-sided, and plain or heavier paper.

Paper: what to buy for crayons, pencils and markers

You do not need special paper for most coloring. Match it to the tools in the box:

• Crayons and colored pencils: standard copy paper is fine. A slightly rough, uncoated surface actually grips crayon better than a glossy one.
• Washable markers: use heavier paper, such as a heavier "premium" copy paper or a light cardstock, so the ink does not soak through to the table. Put a scrap sheet underneath anyway.
• Paint, dot markers or glitter glue: light cardstock, and expect a little curling.

Before you buy a pack of cardstock, check your printer's manual or support page for the heaviest paper it takes and whether to use the rear or manual feed tray. Feeding cardstock through a tray built for copy paper is the fastest way to a paper jam.

If you are printing a book through a print-on-demand service rather than at home, Lulu's coloring book page recommends 60# uncoated paper for the roughest texture or 80# coated for a smoother surface that takes markers, crayon and colored pencil, and advises printing coloring pages on one side only to prevent show-through. The same reasoning applies to home printing. For which tools suit which age, the crayons vs markers guide goes further.

Why pages come out gray, and how to fix each cause

The printer is mixing colors into the black. In color or high-quality grayscale modes, some printers blend colored inks into dark areas, which can look uneven on plain paper. Switch to black and white or black ink only.

The lines in the file are gray. Pages made from photos, scans or screenshots often have soft gray lines and a faint gray background instead of pure white. If you made the page yourself, run it through a threshold step first. GIMP's Threshold tool (Colors > Threshold) turns every pixel black or white, which gives crisp lines and a clean background. The free photo-to-coloring-page guide shows this step in context.

The file is too small. A tiny image stretched to fill a page prints with fuzzy, jagged edges. Download the full-size file or PDF rather than a preview or a screenshot. Printing from a PDF is usually the most reliable option, because the page size is already set.

The black cartridge is low or the nozzles are clogged. If every document looks streaky, not just coloring pages, run your printer's nozzle check or cleaning routine from its settings menu or app.

Draft mode. Draft saves ink by printing fainter lines. Normal quality is the sweet spot.

A quick checklist before you print a stack

1. Print one test page first.
2. Hold it up: are the lines solid black and the background white?
3. Check the edges: nothing important cut off?
4. Try the kids' actual markers on the test page and look at the back for bleed-through.
5. Then print the rest, one-sided.

If you are printing a whole book you made yourself, the guide to making a coloring book from photos covers ordering pages, covers and binding at home or through a print shop. The rest of our make-your-own guides cover supplies.

The same settings work for any printable coloring PDF, whether it came from a free site, an Etsy shop or a Colorkin storybook: print from the PDF itself, one-sided, black only, and test one page first.

Questions parents ask