Save money on printer ink by changing your default printing preferences

Printer ink is expensive and doesn’t seem to last long. Here’s a tip on how to use less ink and save money by changing your default printer settings.

In Control Panel > Printers and Faxes – right-click on your printer(s) that you wish to save ink and select “Printing Preferences…” (see below)

To save ink you’ll want to change the Print Quality to “Fast” or “Draft” mode (see example below). Additionally if you don’t normally need to print in color, change to print in “Grayscale” or “Black Ink Only”. When you change the settings the page example may change colors to reflect the settings change you’ve made. In the example below, I’ve checked the box “Grayscale Printing” so that by default everything will only print using the black ink cartridge. Each printer manufacturer’s Printing Preferences window will look different – so you may have to look around a bit to find the settings that control your printer model.

Changing the settings mentioned above will change the default settings. If you want to print a particular page in color or with higher quality, you can manually make a one-time change back to color or high-quality printing for a single print job from within the program you are printing from. For most programs go to File > Print, select the printer you are printing to and click the “Preferences” button – which will bring up the window that you used to change the default Printing Preferences before.

After you’ve finished that print job, it will revert back to the default ink-saving settings that you established from the Printer Settings in the Printers and Faxes Control Panel.