Inkjet vs laser for printing calendars: the one you own is fine
Print your calendar on whatever printer you already have. If you're buying one mostly for this, get a basic black-and-white laser: it has no liquid ink to dry out between monthly prints, and it feeds the heavier paper a wall calendar wants without leaving its rated range. Cost per page, the usual deciding number, barely applies to a calendar. Here's why.
A calendar page is 1 to 4 percent ink
We measured our own. We ran the January 2028 A4 landscape page of each of our themes through Ghostscript's ink-coverage device at 600 dpi. The simplest layouts cover 1.2 to 1.4% of the page. The densest, the Pixel theme's full grid, covers 4.2%. That is a measurement of the file, not a cartridge test, but it tells you the scale: almost all of every page is bare paper.
| Layout (A4 landscape, January) | Page covered |
|---|---|
| Pixel, simple | 1.2% |
| Editorial, simple | 1.3% |
| Mono, simple | 1.4% |
| Mono, grid | 2.4% |
| Editorial, grid | 2.9% |
| Pixel, grid | 4.2% |
A year is twelve of those pages. Cartridge yields are declared under ISO standards that, as Lexmark puts it, specify "certain page coverage, printer settings and test conditions" — and real yields "may vary considerably." Whatever the rated number on your cartridge, a year of mostly-white pages won't decide between two printers. (This is a design choice; decorated printables are a different story, covered in ink-light printing.)
The real inkjet problem is sitting idle
A calendar gets printed once a month, maybe once a year in a batch. That is exactly the pattern inkjets dislike. Epson's own manuals say: "If you do not use your product often, it is a good idea to print a few pages at least once a month to maintain good print quality" (Epson print head guide). Its troubleshooting guide for pro printers is blunter: "If the printer has not been used for a long time, nozzles may be dried and clogged" (Epson nozzle check). And the fix costs ink: "Print head cleaning uses ink, so clean it only if quality declines" (Epson FAQ).
So the inkjet's expensive moment is not printing your calendar. It's the streaky page that can follow weeks of idling, and the cleaning cycle that fixes it.
A laser has nothing wet to dry. Toner is, in HP's description, "a fine powder composed of pigment and plastic particles," fused to the page by "a combination of heat and pressure that permanently bonds the toner to the paper fibres" (HP on how LaserJets work). There is no liquid in the cartridge and no nozzle to clog.
Lasers take wall-calendar paper inside spec
A calendar hangs best on 100 to 120 gsm paper. On many home inkjets that's above the rated range: Epson gives 64 to 90 gsm plain paper for the sheet feeder of most of its A4 Stylus-generation inkjets (Epson paper handling). Your inkjet may feed 120 gsm anyway. Test one sheet, because it isn't promised.
A cheap mono laser is rated for it. Brother's spec sheet for the HL-L2350DW family lists the main tray at 60 to 163 g/m² and the manual feed slot at 60 to 230 g/m². 120 gsm from the tray, card through the slot, both in spec. One limit worth knowing: the same sheet rates automatic two-sided printing at 60 to 105 g/m² only.
Where an inkjet is still the right printer
If you print photos, colour, or anything glossy, keep the inkjet; a mono laser prints black and nothing else. If your inkjet already lives on the desk and gets used every week, it will print a calendar perfectly well. Set it to grayscale, print on plain uncoated paper rather than glossy, and let each page dry before you stack it.
Either way, print at 100%
The setting that ruins more calendars than any printer choice is "Fit to page." It scales the grid and shifts the margins on inkjet and laser alike, so print at actual size every time.
Our calendars are text and hairlines in black and gray — no colour, no fills — so they print the same on a draft-mode inkjet as on an office laser. Pick your paper size, starting with the A4 edition, or see every format: A4, A5 and Letter, portrait and landscape, $19 once.