What this means
Your printer is applying too little toner or ink, leaving text and images washed out, pale, or faint.
Do not assume the cartridge is empty. Software level indicators are inaccurate, and the cartridge itself often has plenty of supply left.
Instead, look for a physical roadblock or a bad setting. Economy mode might be turned on, cutting your supply usage by up to fifty percent. Laser printer optics gather dust that blocks the light path. Inkjet nozzles partially clog if you have not used the machine in a while. Even damp paper causes this problem by absorbing the ink poorly.
Before anything else, work out which machine you have, because half of what follows applies to one and not the other. A laser or LED printer takes a toner cartridge, a plastic unit holding powder, and prints instantly when it is warm. An inkjet takes small cartridges or refillable tanks of liquid ink and pauses to think before it starts. Advice for one is useless on the other, and most of the frustration with faded printing comes from applying the wrong half.
The pattern of the fading narrows it further, and it is worth looking at a printed page properly before touching anything.
Faded evenly across the whole page, on a laser, is nearly always toner running out or economy mode being on. Faded down one side, or in a band that falls in the same place on every sheet, is the drum or the optics rather than the toner, and no amount of new toner changes it.
On an inkjet, missing horizontal lines through the text, or one colour absent while the others print, is blocked nozzles. This is the most common inkjet cause by a distance and the one people misread as an empty cartridge. A nozzle check pattern settles it in one page: printed from the printer's own menu, it shows a block of lines per colour, and gaps that appear in the same place on repeated checks are blocked nozzles.
Whether it happened suddenly or gradually is the other clue. Overnight is a setting, a cartridge, or a nozzle that dried while the printer sat. Slowly over weeks is genuine wear, and on a laser that usually means the drum.
Common causes
- Toner save or economy print mode is enabled
- Print density setting is set too low
- Dirty printhead nozzles in inkjet printers
- Dust or toner film on the laser scanner glass or LED heads
- Using damp or incorrect paper types
- Expired or failing ink or toner cartridges
- Improper paper weight settings in the driver
What to check first
- 1Check if Economy Mode or Draft Mode is turned on in your print settings
- 2Verify that plain paper is selected in the print driver if you are using standard copy paper
Step-by-step fix
- 1
Disable Draft or Economy Mode
Open your printer settings on your computer before printing. Locate the print quality options and change from draft, eco, or fast mode to standard or high quality.
Printing in high quality will use more ink or toner and run slower.
- 2
Adjust Print Density Settings
Open the printer properties on your computer. Navigate to the device settings or print quality tab and increase the toner density or darkness setting by one or two levels.
- 3
Rule out the paper before buying anything
Take a sheet from the middle of a fresh, unopened ream and print the same document on it. Paper that has absorbed moisture takes ink badly and interferes with the heat that fixes toner, and it produces exactly this symptom on both machine types. If the fresh sheet prints properly, nothing is wrong with the printer, and storing paper wrapped and off the floor prevents it recurring. Check the driver is set to plain paper as well, since a heavier setting lays down less.
- 4
Inkjet: print a nozzle check and read it properly
This is the test that tells you whether cleaning will help, and it takes one sheet. From the printer's own menu, under maintenance or setup, choose nozzle check or print quality check. The page prints a block of fine lines for each colour. A complete block means that colour is fine. Gaps or missing lines mean blocked nozzles, and the colour with gaps is the one causing the fading. Keep the sheet: after a cleaning cycle print another and compare, because that is how you know whether the cleaning achieved anything.
- 5
Inkjet: clean in short runs, not long ones
Head cleaning uses a surprising amount of ink, and running six cycles back to back wastes most of it. Two or three cycles, then leaving the printer switched on and idle overnight, clears more than six in a row does, because the solvent needs time to work on dried ink. Print a nozzle check after each pair rather than after each cycle. If three rounds spread over a day have not improved the pattern, further cleaning will not either, and the head needs soaking or replacing.
Every cleaning cycle draws ink from all colours, not only the blocked one.
- 6
Run a Print Quality Diagnostic
Access the printer control panel or software utility. Run a printhead cleaning cycle for inkjet printers or a calibration routine for laser printers to clear blocked nozzles or align optics.
- 7
Reseat and Shake the Toner Cartridge
Open the printer and remove the toner cartridge. Gently rock it from side to side a few times to redistribute the remaining toner powder evenly inside, then reinstall it.
Do not touch the green or shiny roller on the cartridge to avoid skin oils damaging it.
- 8
Laser: clean the optics, which is what causes one-sided fading
A laser writes the page with a beam through a narrow glass strip, and a film of toner dust on that strip dims part of every page in the same place. Switch the printer off and let it cool, because the fuser inside gets genuinely hot. Open it as the manual shows, find the long thin glass, and wipe it with a dry lint free cloth in one direction. Many printers include a small cleaning wand clipped inside the cover for exactly this. On an LED machine such as an OKI, the equivalent is the LED head, cleaned the same way.
Let the printer cool before reaching inside. The fuser holds heat for several minutes after use.
- 9
Laser: work out whether it is the toner or the drum
They fail differently and only one of them is fixed by a new cartridge. Toner running out fades the page evenly, often worse towards one side, and shaking the cartridge brings it back temporarily. A drum wearing out produces marks or bands in the same position on every single page, and shaking changes nothing. Print the same page three times and lay them side by side: if the fault falls in an identical place each time, it is the drum. On most makes the drum is a separate part; on Kyocera it is designed to last the life of the machine and rarely is.
- 10
Replace the Cartridge
If the cartridge is old or has been refilled with third party ink, install a fresh, genuine manufacturer cartridge to rule out media failure.
When to contact a professional
If you replaced the cartridges, cleaned the accessible optics, and ran all diagnostic cleaning cycles without changing the print density, call a professional technician. This points to a failing high voltage power supply or a worn main logic board. Stop here. You must avoid touching internal high voltage components, and you should never attempt to service the power supply board yourself. Check your warranty before seeking outside service.
Worth knowing
A word about shaking a toner cartridge, because it is good advice with a short life. Rocking it side to side redistributes the powder that has settled away from the roller, and it genuinely brings back a few dozen pages. It works once, sometimes twice. When shaking stops helping, the cartridge is empty in the way that matters, and continuing to shake it wears the drum against a dry roller.
Paper is worth ruling out early because it costs nothing. Paper that has sat in a damp room absorbs ink instead of holding it on the surface, and on a laser it interferes with the heat that fixes the toner. Take a sheet from the middle of a fresh ream, print the same document, and compare. If the fresh sheet is fine, the problem is storage rather than the printer, and keeping paper wrapped and off the floor solves it.
One setting causes more of this than any other and is easy to miss because it lives in two places. Toner save or economy mode can be switched on at the printer's own panel and in the driver on the computer, and either one alone will lighten every page. Turning it off in the driver while it is still on at the panel changes nothing, which is why people conclude the setting is not the cause.