Printing your template at home is a great option if you've got a decent printer and you're looking to save some money by printing yourself. Keep in mind, not all printers have the same settings so this article is going to be a brief outline of what you may face when printing at home.
What You Need to Know About Printing at Home
There are two ways you can print at home. You can print on a full sheet of paper and trim to the size, or you can print right on the exact size card stock you need. Keep in mind, not all printers can print on every size card stock. You should check your print settings to see what sizes your printer supports. If it doesn't support the size you need, you'll have to either print of a full sheet of card stock (US Letter or A4) or take your file to a printer to get it printed.
Is it Worth Printing at Home?
There's really no way to say yes or no. It's worth it for some people and not worth it for others. The toughest part about printing at home is probably going to be trimming. It's not that it's tough but it can be time consuming. Take a look at that section to learn about the challenges with trimming.
File Type for Printing at Home
Downloading your template as a PDF is the best way to go for printing at home. We recommend choosing the "Trim Marks" option as well as the "Save Paper" option in most cases. This way you can print right on a US Letter or A4 sheet of paper with trim marks to show you where to cut.
Card Stock Weight
In order to get a quality print at home, it's important to use a nice quality, heavy card stock. If you print on card stock that is too light and not thick enough, no mater how good your printer prints, it's just not going to feel like a quality card. We recommend at least 100lb card stock for the best feel. If your printer can print on anything heavier than that, even better.
Card Stock Color
It's usually always best to print on white card stock if you have a design that contains color. If your design is all black, then any light color card stock will be fine. If the card stock you choose is too dark, your design will not show up very well. If you try to print a color design on a different color card stock, the design will not show up as well as it would on white.
Print Settings (Quality)
Most printers will have multiple quality settings. While your design will always come from Templett at 300 dpi, printers can print at varying levels of quality. We recommend to test print a few prints with different quality settings to see what looks good to you. The highest quality settings that your printer offers might not be needed and might just be a waste of ink.
Trimming
Trimming may very well be the most time consuming aspect of printing at home. If you are not going to be using a guillotine style paper trimmer, you might find that it will be too much work to print at home. A guillotine paper cutter can cut through a small stack of paper at once and can offer perfect cut lines. It's probably the quickest way to cut at home.
Summing It Up
We hope this overview will help you decide if printing at home is the right choice for you. Either way, we really hope you get excellent results from your Templett design whichever way you decide to print.