How to Print Digital Wall Art at Home (and When to Use a Print Shop)

A printable is only as good as the sheet it ends up on. We render every print as a PDF with the type embedded as vector outlines, so the file itself will never be the weak link. Paper, printer settings and trimming are where a print either looks like it came from a gallery or looks like it came from an office. This guide covers what we would tell anyone asking, from home inkjets to online fine-art printers.

Start with the file: PDF, not JPG

Your download is a PDF at the exact trim size you ordered. Because the letterforms are vector, they stay razor-sharp whether you print 5x7 or 24x36. A JPG is a grid of pixels; scale it up and the edges of the letters go soft. If a printer or kiosk insists on a JPG or PNG, open the PDF in Preview (Mac) or any PDF viewer and export at 300 dpi at the print size. Do not screenshot the product preview on the website. Those images are 700 pixels wide and watermarked; they are there to show you the design, not to print from.

Printing at home

Which sizes are realistic

Most home inkjets take A4 or US Letter, and a few take A3 or 11x17. That comfortably covers 5x7, 8x10 and A4. Anything larger belongs at a print shop. The 5x7 and 8x10 files sit centred on the sheet, so you print at 100% and trim.

Paper

Use a matte paper between 200 and 250 gsm. Sold as "matte photo paper", "presentation paper matte" or "heavyweight matte", it takes ink cleanly, does not glare behind glass, and has enough body to sit flat in a frame. Standard 80 gsm copier paper is too thin: ink bleeds into the fibres, the sheet cockles as it dries, and it ripples behind the glass within a week. Glossy paper is the wrong register for typographic work; it turns a quiet serif into a fridge photo.

A note on tone. Our designs use a warm off-white background rather than pure white, and a soft black rather than pure black. This is deliberate; pure white reads as a screen, and full-coverage pure black bands and streaks on home inkjets. On bright-white paper you may notice the background prints as a faint warm tint. Either choose a natural or warm-white paper so it disappears, or let a mat cover the trimmed edge.

Settings that matter

• Scale: 100% or "Actual size". This is the single most common mistake. "Fit to page" or "Shrink to fit" quietly rescales the design by a few percent, and your 8x10 no longer fits an 8x10 frame. Set it to actual size, every time.
• Paper type: match the setting to the paper. The printer meters ink differently for matte photo paper than for plain paper. Leaving it on plain paper is the usual cause of grey, washed-out text.
• Quality: best or high. Draft mode saves ink by dithering; you will see it in the counters of small letters.
• Borderless: off. The designs carry generous margins, so a printer's unprintable edge lands in white space. Borderless mode often enlarges the page slightly to hide the edge, which is fit-to-page by another name.

Let the sheet dry flat for ten minutes before you handle it. Pigment ink is dry almost at once; dye ink on heavy matte stock wants a little longer.

Trimming

A steel ruler and a craft knife on a cutting mat give a cleaner edge than scissors. A guillotine trimmer is faster if you have one. Measure from the printed image, not the sheet edge, since a page can feed a millimetre off centre. If you plan to mat the print, you can be less precise: the mat covers roughly a quarter inch on each side.

When to use a print shop

Three situations: you want 11x14 or larger, you have chosen one of the dark designs, or you want a truly archival print.

Office print shops

Chains such as Officeworks in Australia, FedEx Office in the United States and the high-street print shops in the UK will print a PDF on heavy matte stock within the hour and for a few dollars. Ask for "matte, 200 gsm or heavier, printed at 100%, no scaling, trimmed to size". If the counter staff mention "poster paper", ask to see it; some poster stock is a thin satin that looks fine until it is behind glass.

Dark designs (our Ink and Charcoal palettes lay down near-solid coverage) are a good reason to go to a shop. A laser or production inkjet lays down a dense, even dark field that a home printer struggles to match without streaking.

Online printers

For 18x24 and 24x36, or for a print that will hang for decades, upload the PDF to an online fine-art printer and choose a giclée option on cotton rag or a heavyweight matte. Pick the exact trim size you ordered; the ratio matters more than the brand. Turnaround is usually a few days and the result is indistinguishable from a print bought framed in a shop.

Framing and mats

Buy the frame first. All eight of our sizes correspond to frames stocked off the shelf, so the ratio question is settled before you download. A mat is the difference between "printed at home" and "framed". The common pairings are an 8x10 print in an 11x14 frame with an 8x10 mat opening, a 5x7 in an 8x10, and an 11x14 in a 16x20. Ready-cut mats are sold with openings slightly smaller than the nominal size (a 7.5x9.5 opening for an 8x10 print) so the print sits behind the window with no gap.

Charles Eames said it best, and it is a quote we keep above our own cutting mat.

The details are not the details. They make the design.

See the print →

Colour expectations, honestly

These are near-monochrome prints, which makes them forgiving. Even so, black is never quite black on a home inkjet; expect a deep charcoal, and know that this is what the file intends. Two prints of the same file on two different papers will differ slightly in warmth. If you are printing a set to hang together, print them all on the same paper on the same day.

The mistakes we see most

1. Fit-to-page scaling. Check the setting before every print, because some drivers reset it.
2. Printing the website preview instead of the downloaded PDF.
3. Copier paper behind glass. It will ripple.
4. Ordering a 4:5 print (8x10, 16x20) for a 2:3 frame (24x36, 4x6). Match the ratio to the frame you own.
5. Tiling a large print across several sheets at home. It can be done, but a print shop will do it in one piece for less than the ink costs.

How the prints work

Every quote on thequote.shop is an instant download: a PDF with the type embedded as vector outlines, in your choice of up to 20 typographic designs and eight sizes (5x7, 8x10, 11x14, 12x16, 16x20, 18x24, 24x36 and A4), for a flat AUD 6.99. The download link arrives by email as soon as payment clears. Start with the wisdom prints if you want somewhere to begin.