Printing coloring pages at home: paper size, scale and single-sided

Printing a coloring book at home is mostly easy, but a few settings in the print dialog decide whether the pages come out as designed. This guide covers the ones that matter, in the order you meet them.

A4 or US Letter?

The two common home paper sizes are close but not the same. A4 is a little narrower and taller; US Letter is a little wider and shorter:

If you print an A4 file on Letter paper, or the other way round, the printer either crops the edges or shrinks the page to fit. Neither is a disaster for a coloring page with a white border, but it is better to choose the right size when you download. Kids Books Maker exports both, so pick the one that matches the paper in your tray.

Print at 100%

Most print dialogs have a scaling option, often set to "Fit to page" or "Shrink oversized pages" by default. For coloring pages, choose "Actual size", "100%" or "None". Scaling a page down makes every line thinner and every region smaller, which undoes the care that went into choosing line weight and region size for the age you picked.

One side of the paper

Felt-tip markers often soak through ordinary printer paper. If the next picture is on the back, it gets ruined. Printing single-sided avoids that: every picture has its own sheet and the back stays blank. It uses more paper, but it is the reason our home-print PDFs are set up as single-sided.

For a book of 24 pictures plus a title page, a "belongs to" page and one back page, that means 27 sheets of paper. Our page count planner works this out for any book.

Paper choice

Thicker paper holds up better to markers and erasing, and it feels more like a book. We are not going to name a weight that suits every printer, because printers differ in what they can feed. Check your printer's manual for the thickest paper it accepts, and try a sheet before buying a big pack.

Black ink only

Coloring pages are pure black line art on white. Setting the printer to "black and white" or "grayscale" saves colour ink and can make lines crisper on some printers. If your printer offers a "draft" or "economy" mode, avoid it for coloring pages: lines can come out grey and broken.

Print a test page first

1. Open the PDF and print just one page, with the settings above.
2. Hold it next to the screen. Is anything cut off at the edges?
3. Check the lines are solid black, not grey or speckled.
4. Color a corner with the tools the child will use, and check the back of the sheet.
5. If all is well, print the rest.

Binding a home-printed book

A home-printed book does not need binding at all; loose sheets in a folder work well, and a child can take out one page at a time. If you want something more book-like:

• A stapler along the left edge works for a modest stack. A long-reach stapler helps with A4 and Letter.
• A three-ring binder lets pages be added and removed. Punch holes before coloring, not after.
• Many copy shops offer comb or wire binding, which lets the book lie flat.

Planning to sell the book as a paperback instead? The rules are quite different: see our guide to KDP sizes, bleed and margins.