Printer ink is expensive. Most people end up spending more on replacement ink cartridges within a year than they did on the printer itself. In the long run, such expenses can add up to a huge sum.

One of the best ways to keep printing costs under control is to reduce the usage of printer ink. Here in this post, we will discuss exactly that. Read on.  

Use Ink Saving Fonts to Reduce Usage of Printer Ink

Different typefaces consume different amounts of printer ink. The default ‘Arial’ font in most word processors, for instance, uses up to 30% more ink than Century Gothic, a geometric sans serif typeface.

Thin print lines of Century Gothic keep it ‘light’ in terms of ink-usage while maintaining readability for letters in both capital and small case, even with small font size.

Some of the most popular printer ink-saving fonts include Ryman Eco, Baskerville Old Face, Courier, Garamond, and Ecofont.

Ryman Eco consumes around 33% less ink than commonly used fonts such as Verdana and Georgia. The white spaces and tiny lines in this typeface become visible at larger sizes but it’s great for printing text in 10-14 point sizes.

Similarly, Baskerville Old Face is known to use up to 37% less ink than Arial; Garamond uses 30% less ink than the famous Times New Roman; Ecofont Sans uses up to 50% less ink than standard fonts people typically use such as Arial, Verdana, Calibri, Trebuchet MS, and Times New Roman.  

Put simply, merely switching to an ink-saving font can help you reduce ink usage by nearly 33% if you print a lot of text documents.

Set Up Your Inkjet Printer to Save Ink

Printing wisely in order to reduce the usage of printer ink isn’t just about choosing the right printer for a specific print job or following some tried-and-tested methods discussed in this post.

You also need to ensure your printer is properly set up. Most printer users never tweak printer settings after installing printers at home or in offices.

The fact is that most printers are fundamentally designed to be ink-guzzlers. If you haven’t tweaked printer settings, your printer is most likely configured to consume maximum ink for each print job.

Even a humble old inkjet printer would have settings under ‘Print Preferences’ or ‘Printer Properties’ for output quality or ink density. Read the owner’s manual to find how you an access these settings for your printer.

You can configure your printer to print in ‘Draft,’ ‘Economy’ mode by default. You can also configure a printer to print in ‘Grayscale’ or ‘Use black ink only.’

Keep in mind that ‘grayscale’ often uses a combination of both black and color inks; however, the amount of color ink that gets used in the process is minimal. If you want to reduce usage of color inks, set your printer to print in ‘black ink only.’

There will be a noticeable difference in the output quality when you print in Draft/Economy mode but you don’t need the highest possible quality for most print jobs. You can always change back the settings in future.

Print at a Lower Resolution

Print resolution is measured in dots-per-inch (dpi) – it represents the total number of dots printed within a span of one inch. Most inkjet printers available nowadays support a high print resolution.

When you print a photo at a higher resolution, it will have more dots-per-inch and look better. But, your ink cartridge will run out of ink too soon if you keep printing at maximum possible resolution.

Therefore, even if you are using affordable HP ink cartridges, consider printing at 72 dpi even if your printer can print at 200-300 dpi.

You can reduce the print resolution for everyday printing by accessing the printer settings. Print at a higher resolution only when you really need outstanding quality.

Avoid Unnecessary Prints and Use Print Preview Before You Print Anything

Before you hit the ‘print’ button, take a moment to assess whether you really need a hard copy of a document.

Office printers are often used to produce redundant copies of documents that can otherwise be saved in digital form.

You can save both printer ink and paper by storing digital copies of invoices, bills, reports, memos, etc.

Instead of storing hard copies in folders, convert documents into PDFs by using online tools such as Smallpdf. PDF documents cannot be edited by the reader and are great for creating archives.  

Many people print lengthy documents, web pages, spreadsheets, etc. only to find that they needed to make some changes in the document or the content doesn’t appear in printouts as expected.

Therefore, it’s advisable take advantage of the ‘Print Preview’ feature.

It lets you see a digital version of how the printed sheet will look.

You can easily detect potential issues related to typing mistakes, document layout, unnecessary elements within the document, page-breaks, etc. by using the ‘Print Preview’ feature.

Save Ink When You Print a Web Page

If you print web pages on a regular basis, make sure to clear clutter before you print.

Remove unnecessary elements such as advertisement banners, images, graphics, background color, large-size headings, bold text, header, footer etc. to reduce the usage of printer ink.

If you don’t do that, you may end up spending two or three times more ink each time you print a web page.

You can use browser extensions such as ‘Print Friendly’ to quickly remove advertisements, navigation, images, etc. and print only the web content you need.

Use N-Up Printing

N-up refers to a layout strategy in which multiple pages are composited into a single page. N-up printing tools can help you significantly reduce ink usage if you need to print reports, presentations, etc. on a regular basis.

You can use an online N-up tool to generate a PDF version before you print or rely upon the existing N-up feature in your printer software; it’s generally referred to as ‘multi-page option under the layout in printer driver settings.

Avoid Turning off the Printer Too Often

Inkjet printers go through an ink-consuming maintenance and cleaning cycle each time they are turned on. This is done in order to prime the microscopic nozzles. Printer maintenance and cleaning cycles can consume nearly half of the printer ink!

Therefore, it is a good idea to keep your printer on. Switch off your printer only during the extended weekends or at the beginning of a vacation.

Author Bio

My name is George Mendelson. I am the PR Media Manager at InkjetsClub, a nationwide leading ink and toner retailer. One of my passions is educating and helping people through all the issues related to Printers, Ink Cartridges and Toners.