Help / Printing
Printing on both sides without getting the back upside down
Two things decide whether the back of a sheet comes out the right way up. One is a setting in the print dialog. The other is how you put the paper back in, if your printer cannot turn it over by itself.
Which of our sheets are worth it
Fewer than you might think. Most templates here are one page, and a page that gets pinned to a wall or a fridge only ever shows one side.
The monthly calendar is twelve pages. For a wall, print it on one side. For a binder or a clipboard, both sides turns twelve sheets into six. The meal planner is two pages, the week's plan and the grocery list, and the list usually leaves the house without the plan. Print those on two sheets unless you shop with the whole thing. Where both sides pays off is a stack of the same page for a binder: lined paper, a weekly planner, a reading log.
Long edge or short edge
This is the setting that turns the back upside down. The print dialog calls it "flip on long edge" and "flip on short edge", or on a Mac "long-edge binding" and "short-edge binding". It asks which edge of the paper is the hinge.
| The page is | It should turn like | Choose |
|---|---|---|
| Portrait | A book, hinged on the left | Long edge |
| Portrait | A notepad, hinged at the top | Short edge |
| Landscape | A wall calendar, hinged at the top | Long edge |
| Landscape | A book, hinged on the left | Short edge |
The landscape rows look backwards, and they are the ones people get wrong. The printer knows nothing about the design. It knows the paper, and the paper's long edge is its long edge whichever way the design sits on it. A landscape calendar hinged along the top is hinged on the long edge of the sheet.
If the printer cannot turn the paper itself
Then you are the duplexer. Print the odd pages, put the stack back in, and print the even pages on the other side. Most print dialogs have an "odd pages only" choice, sometimes under "paper handling" or "more options".
How the stack goes back in is different on every printer, so test before a long job. Print page one. Put the sheet back the way you think is right and print page two on it. One wasted sheet tells you what your printer wants: face up or face down, top edge first or last. Write the answer on a sticky note and put it on the printer. You will not remember it in three months.
With more than one sheet, check the order as well. Some printers stack their pages face up, so the last page ends on top and the second pass has to run in reverse. A two-page test cannot show that. A four-page test can.
Paper and ink for two sides
Ordinary 20 lb copier paper lets the back show through as a gray shadow. 24 lb paper (90 gsm) mostly stops it and costs a little more. The light-ink theme helps too, because there is less on the back to show.
On an inkjet, give the first side a minute to dry before it goes back in, or the rollers will drag wet ink across the page.
Expect the back to sit a millimeter or two off the front. Every home printer does this. It is one reason our sheets keep half an inch clear on all four sides, so a small shift never pushes anything off the paper. A three-hole punch lands its holes about half an inch in, right where that margin ends, and may nick the ends of the rules on one side. It does no harm.