How to print a coloring book PDF at home: settings that work

You need the PDF saved to your computer, a printer with fresh ink or toner, paper that suits your medium, and ten minutes for a test page. Do the setup once and every book after it prints the same way. Nothing here needs special equipment beyond a free PDF reader.

Save the file first. A Motiv Colors purchase gives you three downloads with no expiry date, so put a copy somewhere permanent instead of downloading it again each time. Open it in Adobe Acrobat Reader, which is free and has the clearest print options.

Then know what is in the file. Our English PDFs are set up at US Letter, 8.5 x 11 inches, and each book runs 25 to 30 detailed pages, apart from World War II, which has 60+. Every scene carries its caption of real history, so you print the story along with the illustration.

Open the file in a PDF reader, choose one page, set your paper size, select Actual size for US Letter paper or Fit for A4, turn off two-sided printing and choose the highest quality. Print that single page as a test. If it looks right, print the rest in batches.

Run your test on a page you actually want to color. A busy scene such as Tutankhamun’s tomb or a Normandy beach exposes faint lines and cropped corners far faster than a simple page would.

Detailed books that reward a careful print

Use Actual size when your paper matches the PDF, and Fit when it does not. A US Letter PDF on US Letter paper needs no scaling, while the same file on A4 does, because A4 is narrower. That one rule settles the disagreement you will find across other printing guides.

Some guides tell you to always choose Fit, and others tell you never to. Both are half right, because the answer depends on the two sizes involved. Adobe’s own definitions make it simple: Actual size prints without scaling and crops whatever does not fit, while Fit resizes the page to the printable area of your sheet.

On A4 you lose nothing that matters. The reduction is too small to notice on a finished page, and the whole illustration stays on the sheet.

Home printers also keep a narrow margin they cannot reach. If a page at Actual size loses a sliver of its border, switch to Fit and move on.

Use 120gsm paper for colored pencils, 160gsm for water-based markers, and 200gsm or heavier for alcohol markers and watercolor. Smooth stock suits wax pencils and markers, while a light tooth helps oil pencils layer. Standard 75gsm office paper works for a test page but wrinkles under heavy color.

Check your printer’s limit before you buy a ream. Many home printers accept heavy stock only through a rear tray or one sheet at a time, so look up the maximum in the manual.

Let the book guide the spend. Our World War II scenes take hours of layered pencil, so 120gsm earns its price there, and you can compare the cost against a bound copy in our PDF vs physical coloring book breakdown.

Choose the highest quality your printer offers, set the paper type to match your stock, and print the scenes in black only. Draft or ink-saver mode thins the outlines and turns them gray. Line art uses little ink because the page is mostly white, so the better setting costs very little.

Inkjet and laser printers both work. An inkjet page needs a few minutes to dry before you touch it, and its ink can smear under alcohol markers, so test a corner first.

The cover is in color and the scenes are black line art. If you want the cover, print it once on your heaviest stock, then run the scenes in black only.

Print single-sided every time. Pencil pressure embosses the back of the sheet, markers bleed straight through, and a double-sided page means finishing one scene can ruin the next. Single-sided printing also lets you pull out a finished page and frame it without sacrificing another illustration on the reverse.

Slip a scrap sheet under your page when you use markers, since even heavy paper can let some color through to the desk. If a page goes wrong, print it again for the cost of one sheet.

That safety net changes how you color, because you stop being afraid of the page. Try something risky from our guide on how to color texture on a spare copy before you commit to the real one.

On an iPhone or iPad, open the PDF in Files or Books, tap Share, then Print, and choose your AirPrint printer. On Android, open it in Google Drive, open the menu and tap Print. Phones offer fewer sizing options than a computer, so print one test page before you run a batch.

If your phone will not let you change the scaling, move the file to a computer for the full set of controls. A tablet gives you another option: color directly on the PDF in an app such as Procreate and skip the paper entirely.

Print in story order and in small batches. Every Motiv Colors book runs chronologically, so the first five pages give you the opening of the story and a stack you can realistically finish. You keep your desk clear, and you only buy paper for the pages you will color.

Take the Tutankhamun book: you start with a nine-year-old taking the throne and reach Howard Carter’s discovery in 1922 by the last pages. Print one stretch of the story at a time and each batch feels like an episode. Read each caption before you pick up a pencil, for the reasons we set out in learning history through coloring.

The World War II book needs this approach most. At 60+ scenes, print by campaign: Dunkirk and the Battle of Britain one weekend, the Pacific the next. If you are printing as a present, our guide on how to gift a printable shows you how to box the first ten.

Choose your next era to print

Keep pages loose in a folder if you color one at a time, use a three-ring binder if you add batches, and take the stack to a copy shop for spiral binding if you want a real book. Bind after you print, and leave room to swap in reprints later.

A copy shop is also the answer if you own no printer at all. You can have the file printed for your own use on paper heavier than most home machines can feed. Ask for single-sided printing at actual size on US Letter or A4.

Most printing problems come from four things: the wrong scale, the wrong paper size, draft quality or a browser viewer. Match your symptom in the table below, change that one setting, and print a single page again before you run the full batch. Most problems clear on the first retry.

Change one setting at a time. If you change three at once, you will not know which one fixed it for next time.

You now have everything you need: the right paper, the right setting and a test page to confirm both. Print one scene tonight, color it this weekend, and reprint it whenever you want another attempt. Every Motiv Colors title arrives as an instant PDF, ready for its first page in minutes.

Choose the era you have always wanted to know better. Then let the printer do the boring part.