Improving efficiency and saving money when printing at home

If you are wondering why printer ink is sometimes more expensive than fine champagne, you will probably be looking for ways to save money on printing in your home office.

In this article, we’re going to share five great tips to help you save money on printer ink:

Four Cartridge Economics

The majority of printers use four colours to produce all their tones, shades and patterns – cyan, magenta, yellow and black (the CMYK scale). Older printers tended to house cyan, magenta and yellow into one ink cartridge – however this often leads to significant waste. If the cyan depleted, the whole cartridge would have to be replaced regardless of how much magenta and yellow remained.

Newer models which dedicate an individual cartridge to each of the colours ensure that only the colours which have depleted require replacing. Therefore investing in printers which incorporate the four cartridge principle can help you save on ink cartridge replacement costs.

Utilise Print Preview

Wasted ink can be incredibly frustrating, so endeavour to never waste any unnecessarily. Checking, double-checking and triple-checking documents can reduce the risk that you have made any mistakes before printing. Using print preview can ensure help you identify exactly what you are going to print – alleviating the risk of printing reams of paper when you only intended to print the first page.

Due care can reduce the amount of pages which are crumpled up and thrown into the waste paper basket – saving paper and ink.

Don’t Buy in Bulk

Whilst bulk buying can lead to savings on many products, this economy does not necessarily extend to print cartridges. With a finite life expectancy before they perish, buying cartridges in bulk can lead to waste. Look for online stockists such as Printerland, which usually offer lower prices on cartridges and consumables compared to buying in a shop.

Print in Black and White

Coloured inks can be considerably more expensive than their monochrome counterparts, so print in black and white where possible. Unless you require coloured print outs for the aesthetic appeal or to help highlight certain pieces of text – always print in black and white.

This advice can extend to printing out web pages or emails. Rather than printing directly from the web or your inbox, copy and paste the information into a word processing program and change all the text to black and white, then print.

Use Economy Settings

Helping save money and the environment, many printers come with economy settings which will be more frugal with their use of power and inks. Keeping these turned on will minimise the amount of ink used throughout print tasks.

However when these economy settings are turned on, the printer may not operate with full crispness – so be sure to turn them off when printing off holiday snaps.