Although using your printer at home can save you money in some areas, it costs you in others.
If you buy a cheap printer, you may spend more on ink. If you choose the wrong printer settings on your computer, you might waste hundreds of dollars in ink, and if you use unnecessarily fancy paper, you can also increase the cost of printing at home.
To ensure you keep at-home printing costs low, explore these eight ways to save money when printing from home.
- Ignore Low Ink Warnings
Low ink warnings should be considered a mild alert despite their perceived urgency rather than an inducement to throw away ink cartridges and buy new ones immediately. One study shows that discarded Epson ink cartridges retain up to 45% of their black ink, depending on the brand.
The last thing you want to do is waste your high-quality Epson ink by throwing it away prematurely, so instead of disposing of your ink as soon as you see the alert, use it as a reminder to buy replacement cartridges. This practice can save you money because you’ll have the new one on hand once the old cartridges are truly run dry.
- Stop Double-Printing
Many people waste money on double-printing documents because they notice an error after hitting the print button. Sometimes this is because you are so excited to be finished typing the project you want to print it and be done. Other times, you might have rushed through editing the document and failed to catch simple errors.
The best approach to editing your work is to give it some space for a few hours or a couple of days if possible. Come back to it with a fresh set of eyes and do another read-through. You can also ask someone else to scan the document for errors. Whether it is a school paper, a work proposal, or a recipe, you can easily save money on ink and paper by double-checking your work before you print the document.
- Use a High-Quality Printer
Cheap printers are not a good way to save money printing at home. Printer manufacturers sell their machines for what seems like a steal because they know they will make up for the price difference in profits from selling ink. Cheap printers use more ink, costing you more if you frequently print documents at home.
If you print long, text-based documents, invest in a quality laser printer that performs this function more quickly and economically than an inkjet printer. Purchase brand name laser printer ink to use in your printer, and you’ll save a ton of money in the long run.
- Print Only the Pages You Need
A quick way to drain your printer of ink and paper is printing contracts, application forms, and insurance policies. Any of these documents is easily over 20 pages long, but chances are you don’t need the legalese at the bottom of a document, or perhaps you just need a single page that requires a signature.
You can easily save money by learning how to select the page range you want to print before sending your documents to the printer. In the dialogue box on your computer for selecting your print setting, you’ll see “All Pages” is selected as the default. You can change this to print a page range, either inputting a single page number or a group of pages.
- Avoid Discount Inks
While buying discount inks, also called third-party inks, seems like it will save you money, it can end up costing more. Like most discount items, you get lower quality for the reduced price. Reasons to avoid discount inks include voided warranty on the printer, lower color quality and clarity, rejection by the printer, damage to your print heads and
clogging or spotting.
In addition to these issues, buying third-party ink cartridges with poor-quality ink often results in the ink running out faster, requiring you to buy replacements more frequently. Rather than deal with all these complications that end up costing you time and money, opt for the manufacturer’s cartridges.
You can find manufacturer ink at discounted prices, but as long as it is the name brand, you won’t need to buy them as often, and your projects will look better.
- Adjust Ink Settings
One aspect of printing that you may not consider is the print quality setting on your computer. Print settings control the quality of the final product. Professional settings indicate that you should use heavier ink to create a crisp, saturated document, but if you’re printing items that don’t require a professional finish, draft mode can help you save money.
Draft mode uses less ink, creating a grainier final product. While not ideal for important academic or professional pieces, draft mode is perfect for research or rough drafts that don’t need to look great. Draft mode can save you a ton of money over the long haul, so check your printer settings before hitting the print button.
- Choose the Right Paper
One efficient method for saving money when printing at home is to choose the right paper. Heavy paper, like cardstock, soaks up an excessive amount of ink and, often, at-home printers aren’t equipped to handle thick, fancy paper effectively. Documents not only use a ton of ink, but they get stuck in the rollers, and you end up having to print multiple times for the ink to look right.
Alternatively, standard printer paper takes in much less precious ink, leaving you with a perfectly acceptable document for most purposes. Standard paper is also less likely to cause a paper jam because it moves smoothly through the printer. This leads to fewer reprints, resulting in more cost savings.
- Leave Photos for Photo Labs
When printers started offering the ability to print professional-quality photos at home, many perceived it as a way to avoid paying photo labs for printing pictures. But, due to new technologies, it is no longer more cost-effective to print photos at home rather than send them to a store to be published.
Not only does photo paper cost more than regular paper, but paying for prints at the photo lab isn’t as expensive as it used to be. The ink you use on your at-home printer will cost you much more than having a few 4″ x 6″ photos printed at your local photo lab.
Even the process of printing photos at home can become more complicated than pressing a few buttons and digitally transferring them to the store. You have to deal with aligning the photo paper at home and restocking your ink cartridge to ensure it doesn’t run out partway through. To avoid frustration and save on costs, leave the photo printing to the photo lab.
Implement Small Changes to Save Big
Saving money on at-home printing costs is all about implementing small changes to cut your expenses significantly. By investing in a high-quality printer, using trustworthy, brand-name ink cartridges and choosing the right paper, you can make incremental savings that add up over the long-term.
