Printing business cards at home is by far a cheaper and faster method than ordering them from a print company.  Just because the business cards are printed at home this does not mean that they have to look “cheap.”  A few quick tips and these simple steps will have you on your way to printing professional looking business cards at home for a fraction of the cost that professional printing companies charge!

Quick Tips for Printing Business Cards at Home

To print high quality, professional looking business cards at home you will first need to decide on a cardstock or paper to use.  A heavy weight cardstock works the best unless you will be printing business card magnets.  Glossy photo paper is also a great option and is preferred if you will be printing photos onto the business cards.  Photos may come out dull if you do not print them onto a heavy weight, glossy cardstock.  Consider all of these factors before printing your business cards.

For professional looking business cards it is best to stay away from perforated business card papers.  These papers tend to be of a lighter weight cardstock and they also tend to leave a rough edge to the card which makes the business card look cheap.  For best results, choose laser cut business card papers or cut the cards yourself with a paper cutter.

Printing Business Cards

Once you have determined the type of paper that you will use and you have developed the design of your cards you may begin laying out the page to print the cards.  For Windows operating systems it will be necessary to remove the “page scaling” option which is typically set to fit page to width as a default.  Setting this option to none will assure that all of the business cards line up perfectly on the page.

Some business card papers which are already pre-cut will come with directions of how to set up your page layout to assure that the business cards align and print properly.  Additionally, if you are using a heavy weight cardstock that you will cut on your own then setting the print layout within the system is also rather simple.

You may also find it necessary to change the print preferences within your printer settings when you print business cards at home.  For business cards that have a photo background or feature images that are less than half an inch from the edge of the page it will be necessary to change the print preferences so that the printer will print very close to the page edge.  Edit print preferences within the file and print options so that the printer will print on the maximum area of the paper to assure that your business card photos span the entire card space.

Printing a Test Page

If you have purchased a high quality, heavy weight cardstock to print business cards on then you will want to assure that all print settings are correct before you start printing on the paper.  Use a standard sheet of paper and print a test page to assure that you have properly set your page layout.  Align the test page up to your cardstock to determine if the settings are correct before printing your business cards on the high quality paper.