Print quality problems are among the most common and most frustrating printer issues because the cause isn't obvious at first glance. A streaky print and a faded print might look vaguely similar, but they're caused by entirely different things and need different solutions. A print that's the wrong colour might be a cartridge issue, a driver setting, a paper type mismatch, or a colour profile problem — and without working through them systematically, you could spend a long time chasing the wrong thing.
This guide is structured around symptoms. Find what your output looks like, and it'll tell you the most likely causes and how to address them.
Diagnosing by symptom
Almost certainly a clogged print head nozzle. Run the printer's automatic head cleaning utility (found in Maintenance settings) two or three times and print a nozzle check pattern after each run to track improvement.
Either that colour cartridge is genuinely empty (despite the indicator showing otherwise — they're not perfectly accurate), the cartridge is seated incorrectly, or those specific nozzles are fully clogged. Try reseating the cartridge first, then run a cleaning cycle.
Usually an ink level issue, a print quality setting problem, or a paper type mismatch. Check ink levels, ensure print quality is set to Normal or High (not Draft), and verify the paper type setting matches what you're actually using.
Likely a colour profile or colour management setting. This is common after driver changes or when printing from a new application. See the colour accuracy section below.
The paper isn't absorbing the ink properly, or the drying time between passes is insufficient. This usually means paper type mismatch — you're using the wrong paper for the ink type, or you have a setting wrong for the paper you're using.
The image resolution is too low for the print size, or you're printing in Draft mode. High-quality printing requires high-resolution source files — a 72 DPI web image will look poor when printed at A4 size.
The print quality setting is the most overlooked cause
I've seen many people go through elaborate troubleshooting for print quality problems when the answer was simply that the printer was set to Draft mode. Draft mode uses significantly less ink to produce faster output — it's useful for rough proofs but produces noticeably inferior results that can look like a print head problem if you don't know that's the setting in use.
When you send a print job, there should be a Preferences or Properties option in the print dialog. Click it and look for a Quality setting. This might be labelled as Print Quality, Quality/Speed, or similar. Make sure it's set to Normal or Best — not Draft or Economy.
Paper type matching matters more than most people realise
Every inkjet printer is designed to work with specific paper characteristics, and the paper type setting in the driver tells the printer how to adjust its ink delivery for whatever you're printing on.
If you load glossy photo paper but have the paper type set to Plain Paper, the printer will apply ink as if it were going onto porous plain paper. Glossy paper absorbs ink much more slowly, so the result is over-inked output that smears and takes forever to dry. Conversely, printing on plain paper with a Photo Paper setting will produce noticeably different results than printing on plain paper with the Plain Paper setting.
Always make sure the paper type setting in your print dialog matches the paper actually in the printer. This single setting change can make a dramatic difference to output quality on the same paper.
Colour accuracy and colour management
If your colours look shifted — blues printing as purple, yellows printing orange, skin tones looking orange or grey — the issue is almost certainly colour management. This is a topic that goes very deep if you want it to, but for most practical purposes, there are two main things to check.
First, check whether your application and printer driver are both attempting to manage colour simultaneously. If both are doing colour correction at the same time, you get double-corrected output that looks nothing like the original. In most applications, you should either let the application manage colour (with the printer driver set to "No Colour Adjustment" or "Application Manages Colours") or let the printer manage it (with the application set to pass through colour without correction). Doing both at once is a very common source of colour inaccuracy.
Second, if you're seeing consistent colour shifts across all your output regardless of application, the issue may be with the cartridges themselves. Empty or low cartridges don't always flag low before they start producing inaccurate colour — a nearly-empty cyan cartridge will cause yellowed output, and a nearly-empty yellow will affect greens and skin tones. Running the printer's ink level check is always worth doing when colour accuracy degrades.
Banding: the pattern that looks like horizontal lines
Banding is a specific type of quality problem where you see evenly spaced horizontal lines or variations in density across a print — the output looks like it was made in bands rather than smoothly. This is different from a single streak from a clogged nozzle.
Banding is usually caused by a calibration issue. Inkjet printers build up an image by moving the print head across the paper in passes, advancing the paper slightly between passes. If the paper advancement is slightly off — advancing too much or too little — you get visible bands where passes either overlap or leave gaps.
Most printers have an alignment or calibration utility in their maintenance settings. Running this utility prints a test pattern and either automatically calibrates the paper advancement or asks you to select which pattern looks best (manual alignment). Doing this when banding appears usually resolves it.
When it's a toner issue in laser printers
Laser printers have a different set of quality problems. The most common is a consistent streak or line running vertically down every page, which almost always means a scratch or defect on the drum unit. The drum is the cylinder that picks up the toner pattern and transfers it to paper — any mark on the drum appears on every single page at the same position.
Drum units are user-replaceable on most laser printers and cost between £30 and £80 depending on the model. If you see a consistent line down every print, the drum is very likely the cause and replacing it will fix it immediately.
Faded output on a laser printer usually means the toner is genuinely low, but there's a well-known trick: removing the toner cartridge and gently rocking it from side to side redistributes the remaining toner and can get you an extra 50-100 pages before the cartridge is truly exhausted. This doesn't damage anything and is a perfectly valid way to extend cartridge life when you're close to empty.
When to accept that something is worn out
Print quality naturally degrades over the life of a printer. Print heads in inkjet printers have a finite lifespan — typically stated in the number of prints or millilitres of ink passed through them. After many thousands of pages, even a well-maintained head may not produce the same quality it once did, and no amount of cleaning will restore it.
At that point, the decision is whether to replace the print head (possible on some models, expensive), buy a new printer, or accept slightly reduced quality for non-critical work. There's no shame in any of these choices — it depends entirely on how the printer is used and what you need from it.
The most important thing when quality degrades is to diagnose the actual cause before spending money. Many quality problems that seem like hardware degradation are actually settings issues, clogged heads that can be cleaned, or paper type mismatches — all of which are free or very cheap to fix. Work through the causes systematically before concluding that something is physically worn out.