How to Set Your Printer to Print in Black and White by Default

Ever wonder why color ink seems to vanish between cartridge changes even on weeks spent printing nothing but text documents? The answer is almost always the factory default — most inkjets and color lasers ship with color output enabled regardless of the job. Knowing how to set a printer to print in black and white by default is one of the highest-ROI configuration changes in our printer how-tos and tips playbook, and on most systems it takes under five minutes to lock in permanently.

Our team has walked through this process on dozens of models — Brother, HP, Epson, Canon, Lexmark — across Windows, macOS, and Linux. The steps differ slightly by OS and manufacturer, but the core logic never changes: find the system-level default preferences, flip the color mode to grayscale or monochrome, and save. What most people miss is that changing settings inside a single application like Word or Chrome only affects that one job. The default has to be set at the driver level to stick.

In this guide, we cover every major path to making grayscale the permanent default, break down the real ink savings home users and small offices can expect, walk through the maintenance habits that keep printers healthy when color nozzles sit idle, and flag the scenarios where keeping color as default actually makes more sense.

Why Default Black and White Printing Matters

The Default Color Problem

Most inkjet printers route every print job through the full color pipeline by default. As documented in the Wikipedia entry on inkjet printing, color inkjets produce composite black by mixing cyan, magenta, and yellow inks unless explicitly instructed to use only the black cartridge. That means a plain-text invoice depletes color cartridges just as surely as a photo print does — just more slowly.

The default color setting is a factory choice, not a hardware limitation. Manufacturers benefit from faster ink consumption. Home users and small offices pay for it in replacement cartridges they didn't need to buy.

What Grayscale Default Actually Fixes

Switching to black and white by default addresses several problems at once:

• Color cartridges stop depleting on text-only jobs
• Print jobs run faster — fewer nozzle passes per page
• Toner or ink costs drop 20–60% depending on printer model and print volume
• Cartridge swap frequency decreases significantly for home and small office users
• Print output becomes more consistent — grayscale rendering is more predictable than composite black mixing

Pro tip: On inkjets, always confirm the grayscale setting is using the dedicated black cartridge — look for a "Black Ink Only" or "Pure Black" option. Without it, the printer may still mix color inks to simulate black, draining all four cartridges.

What's Needed to Change Default Print Settings

Hardware and Software Checklist

No purchases are required for most setups. The controls are already built into the OS or the printer driver — they just need to be located and configured.

• Full manufacturer driver installed — not the basic or universal driver. Manufacturer-specific drivers expose far more settings, including granular color controls
• Admin access on the computer — changing system-level printer defaults requires elevated permissions, especially on shared or managed machines
• Printer connected and recognized as online — the settings panel won't load for an offline device
• Manufacturer companion app (optional but useful) — HP Smart, Epson Connect, Brother iPrint&Scan, Canon PRINT each offer cleaner access to default settings than the generic Windows dialog

Common Setup Pitfalls

• Changing color settings inside a single application (Word, Chrome, Acrobat) only affects that job — it never writes to the system default
• The printer's LCD control panel governs copy and scan defaults, not PC print defaults — those live in the driver
• Basic/universal print drivers often hide color mode options entirely; downloading the full driver from the manufacturer's website resolves most "I can't find the grayscale setting" problems

Our experience is consistent here: the full driver download from the manufacturer's support page is almost always the fix when the grayscale toggle is missing from the print dialog.

How to Set the Printer to Print in Black and White by Default

This is the core of what most people are after. The path differs by operating system, so we've broken it into three routes. There's no need to follow all three — pick the one that matches the current setup.

On Windows 10 and 11

1. Open Settings → Bluetooth & devices → Printers & scanners
2. Click the target printer name
3. Select Printer properties — not "Printing preferences," which is per-job only
4. Navigate to the Advanced tab and click Printing Defaults
5. Find the Color or Color Mode dropdown — set it to Grayscale, Black & White, or Monochrome
6. If the driver shows a "Black Ink Only" or "Pure Black" checkbox, enable it
7. Click Apply, then OK

On HP and Brother drivers, the color setting sometimes lives under a Quality or Advanced tab within Printing Defaults rather than on the main screen. The logic is the same regardless of where the dropdown hides.

Warning: On shared network printers, Printing Defaults changes affect every user on that machine. On any shared workstation, communicate the change to other users before saving.

On macOS

1. Open System Settings → Printers & Scanners
2. Select the printer and note the driver version under Options & Supplies
3. Open any document and choose File → Print to access the full print panel
4. Expand the panel and find the color dropdown — typically under the printer name submenu or a Color/Quality section
5. Select Black & White or Grayscale
6. Click the Presets dropdown at the bottom → Save Current Settings as Preset
7. Name it something obvious like "B&W Default" — this preset now appears in every app's print dialog

macOS doesn't expose a single global color-mode lever the way Windows does. The preset system is the reliable workaround, and it works consistently across applications once configured.

Using Manufacturer Software

Manufacturer apps often provide the most direct path to locked-in defaults:

• HP Smart: Settings → Print Quality → Color → select Black & White → Save as Default
• Epson Printer Utility: Driver Settings → Color Management → Grayscale
• Brother iPrint&Scan: Machine Settings → Ink Save Mode combined with B&W in Print Preferences
• Canon PRINT: Printer Settings → Color/Intensity → Manual → Black and White

For anyone working with Epson hardware and navigating the driver interface for the first time, our guide on how to change ink cartridges on an Epson printer walks through the exact driver layout — the same interface where grayscale defaults live.

Fast Ways to Switch to Grayscale Without a Full Setup

Application-Level Shortcuts

Sometimes the goal isn't a permanent system change — it's getting the current job done in black and white fast. Our team keeps these per-job shortcuts in rotation:

• Windows Print Dialog: Ctrl+P → More Settings → Printer Properties → flip Color to Grayscale for that job only
• Google Chrome: Ctrl+P → More Settings → Color → Black and White — Chrome remembers this setting per printer between sessions
• Microsoft Word: File → Print → Printer Properties → Color tab → Grayscale
• Adobe Acrobat: File → Print → Advanced → Color Management → Print In Grayscale
• macOS PDF viewer: File → Print → expand the panel → Grayscale

Printer Panel Shortcuts

Most modern all-in-ones with a display screen have a home-screen shortcut menu:

• A Copy mode with a B&W option — useful for physical document reproduction without touching the PC
• Ink Save or Economy mode buttons — these typically force grayscale or reduced-ink output automatically
• A dedicated monochrome button (black square icon) on fax-capable all-in-ones

For multi-page documents where both paper and ink waste are concerns, combining grayscale mode with duplex printing delivers the biggest efficiency gains. Our post on how to reduce paper waste when printing covers that combination in depth.

Quick win: Setting Chrome's per-printer color preference to Black and White handles the majority of everyday home printing without ever touching system-level driver settings — it's the fastest path to grayscale for most home users.

The Real Cost Savings From Printing in Grayscale by Default

Per-Page Cost Breakdown

The ink cost argument for defaulting to black and white is compelling at every printer tier. Here's a breakdown based on typical home and small-office print volumes:

Which Users Save the Most

Budget inkjet users see the largest absolute delta — the per-page gap between color and black-and-white output is widest on entry-level hardware with expensive cartridges. Our coverage of HP Instant Ink vs. buying cartridges confirms that even subscription ink programs don't fully close this gap for text-heavy users.

On EcoTank and MegaTank models with refillable ink reservoirs, the per-page savings are smaller in absolute terms, but cartridge-replacement anxiety disappears entirely — reservoirs on these machines last thousands of pages regardless of color mode. The grayscale setting still extends the fill interval further, which matters when ordering replacement ink in bulk.

Mono laser users have already solved the problem by hardware selection — their printers have no color pipeline at all, so there's nothing to configure.

Keeping Print Quality Sharp When Running Mostly Grayscale

Inkjet Head Maintenance

Here's the tradeoff most guides overlook: inkjet printers that rarely fire color nozzles develop clogged print heads. Cyan, magenta, and yellow ink dries in dormant nozzles over weeks, and when color output is eventually needed, the result is streaking, banding, or missing colors entirely.

Prevention is straightforward:

• Run a nozzle check and light print-head cleaning monthly — most drivers expose this under a Maintenance or Tools tab
• Print one full-color test page every three to four weeks, even when the system default is set to black and white — this keeps all nozzles primed and flowing
• Store the printer in a room with stable temperature and moderate humidity — extremes accelerate ink drying in idle heads
• Avoid leaving any inkjet fully unused for more than four weeks without running at least a short color job

Laser Printer Considerations

Monochrome laser printers have no nozzle-clogging concern whatsoever. Color laser printers are a different story — color toner drums can develop contamination and calibration drift when they sit unused for extended periods. Our team recommends running a full-page color calibration print quarterly on color lasers that operate primarily in grayscale mode.

For anyone experiencing connectivity issues after a driver reinstall — a common side effect of the driver update that often accompanies hunting down grayscale settings — our guide on how to stop a printer from going offline repeatedly walks through those diagnostics systematically.

When Black and White Is the Right Call (and When It Isn't)

Scenarios Where Grayscale Default Wins

Defaulting to black and white is the right configuration for most home and small-office environments. It makes clear sense when:

• The majority of output is text-based: contracts, essays, invoices, forms, notes, reference documents
• The printer serves a small business running receipts, internal reports, or shipping labels
• The device is shared among users who rarely need color output
• Ink cost management is an active priority — especially on machines with expensive cartridges
• Print volume is high relative to print variety — the more pages per month, the more the default mode matters

When Color Default Still Makes Sense

There are genuine cases where defaulting to grayscale creates more friction than it saves:

• Photo printing workflows — every photo job requires a manual override, which becomes tedious fast
• Design and marketing teams proofing color output regularly — the constant per-job switching undermines the workflow
• Classrooms or family printers where the majority of output is color worksheets, craft templates, or kids' projects
• Specialty printing setups where color accuracy is the entire point of the job
• Multi-page layout proofs and poster output — for large-format tiled prints, see our guide on how to print a poster across multiple pages, where color fidelity across page seams is critical

Our team's rule of thumb: if more than 40% of monthly print jobs require accurate color reproduction, leave the system default as color and rely on per-job switching instead. Below that threshold, grayscale default wins on cost, speed, and simplicity every time.

Frequently Asked Questions

Final Thoughts

Switching to black and white by default is a five-minute configuration change with months of compounding ink savings behind it — and our team considers it one of the first things anyone should do when setting up a new printer. Head into Printing Defaults today, flip the color mode to grayscale, enable Black Ink Only if the driver offers it, and run a quick nozzle check monthly to keep those idle color heads in good shape. The cartridges last longer, the print jobs run faster, and the savings accumulate from the very next page.

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