As anyone who uses their printer a lot knows, ink cartridges are expensive. Fortunately, there are simple ways to reduce this expense.

Avoid colours

The first tip for saving ink in your printer is to choose black over colour. This is because black ink cartridges are cheaper. This is partly due to the greater legibility of characters printed in black.

It is not necessary to enlarge them, as is often the case with colour text. For printing text, in particular, black ink is sufficient.

If you leave the machine in colour mode, it will use all the cartridges. It would therefore be a shame to spend the more expensive coloured ink on printing simple text.

To save ink, you can also print your documents in "greyscale".

Don't print everything

Take time to think about what you want to print. You've decided which page the printer should deliver. But are you sure that you are really interested in everything on it?

For example, the advertisement for this or that product is probably irrelevant to the information you need. Similarly, you may be able to do without the photos.

If you are only interested in a few lines, cut and paste them onto a blank page and print them out. This way you avoid spending coloured ink on things that are not important to you.

Check your documents before printing

The best way to avoid printing everything indiscriminately is to check the print preview. This will show you the entire page to be printed.

This will make it easier for you to spot unnecessary elements. But the print preview can also help you in other ways. For example, you can reduce the font size or trim the margins. These are all areas where the ink does not have to go!

Smaller fonts and narrower margins may also allow you to fit your documents onto a single sheet.

Cheaper cartridges and maximum usage

A simple way to save money on ink for your printer is to look for websites or shops that sell cartridges at a lower price. For example, you should buy ink cartridges from Bureau Vallée, the office supplies specialist.

They offer cartridges at really low prices. And don't listen to your printer's "advice" when it tells you that the cartridge is empty.

It often still contains ink. Remove the cartridge from the machine and install it again. It will still give you good use.

Pay attention to the choice of font

You might not think that the font you choose will affect your ink consumption. However, some fonts are a real drain on ink consumption!

It is therefore important to find out which fonts are most advantageous in this respect. Some fonts can reduce your ink consumption by 40% or more.

There is even a font that has been designed for this purpose. The reason it uses less ink is that the characters are slightly open-ended, but this is not really noticeable. The printed text therefore looks normal and you save a lot of money.