The 2026 School-Year Ink Audit: Counting Pages Before You Buy Cartridges

November is when the school-year print bill stops being theoretical. The September novelty has gone, the kitchen calendar is three layers deep in club letters, and the printer has started making That Noise. You know the one.

Most UK families do not set out to spend a small fortune on ink between September and July. It happens in dribs and drabs: a newsletter nobody reads, a permission slip signed in a rush, a topic cover printed in full colour because the child insisted, and a photo request that arrives with 24 hours' notice. None of it feels expensive on its own. Together, it quietly empties a cartridge.

So before you add another box to the basket, do a school-year ink audit. It is less dull than it sounds, and it usually saves more than a voucher code ever will.

The printing nobody budgets for

School print jobs fall into two rough groups. The first is admin: newsletters, permission slips, club forms, reading records, spellings, timetables and the occasional letter about a non-uniform day. These are mostly text, mostly black and white, and mostly urgent.

The second is schoolwork and showing off: homework sheets, project covers, certificates, posters, revision notes and the photo request for a display board. Some of this genuinely benefits from colour. A lot of it does not. A geography worksheet does not need to be a festival of cyan and magenta.

If you can separate those two piles in your head, you are already halfway to a sensible ink budget.

Count two weeks, not a whole year

Guessing is the enemy here. Instead, keep a tally for a fortnight. A sheet of paper on the fridge is fine. Every time something comes out of the printer, mark M for mono or C for colour, and jot the rough page count.

At the end, double it. That is your household's weekly page rate during term time. Typical numbers look like this: a primary-age child might generate 10 to 20 pages a week once newsletters and homework are included. A secondary-age child can push that to 25 or 40, especially around assessment season. Add a few pages for parents printing their own things, because you are part of this household too.

Then look at the colour split. In many homes, colour is a small slice of the total — perhaps two to five pages a week — but it uses the expensive cartridge. That distinction matters when you choose what to buy.

Mono is the workhorse; colour is the treat

Your black cartridge is doing the heavy lifting. Treat it as the workhorse and buy accordingly. If your two-week tally shows 50 mono pages a week and three colour pages, your money should follow the mono pages.

For colour, ask the boring question before printing: does this need colour, or does it need to be legible? Certificates and photos can have colour. A draft essay can survive in greyscale. Many printers let you set mono as the default and switch to colour only when you mean it. That single setting change can stretch a colour cartridge by weeks.

Standard, XL or compatible? Match the cartridge to the term

This is where the school-year budget gets practical. A standard cartridge is fine if you print lightly and irregularly. An XL cartridge usually offers a lower cost per page, but only if you will actually use it before it sits in the machine for months. Compatible cartridges can be considerably cheaper per page, but buy from a seller with a clear UK returns policy and a warranty you can actually read.

Do the cost-per-page sum, not the sticker-price sum. A £30 XL cartridge that prints 500 pages is 6p a page. A £12 compatible that prints 300 pages is 4p a page. A £18 standard that prints 200 pages is 9p a page. The cheapest box on the screen is not always the cheapest term.

And be honest about volume. If your fortnightly tally says 40 pages a week, an XL black makes sense. If it says eight, a standard cartridge and a spare is probably enough.

The summer trap: don't buy a year's ink in November

Schools break up in July. Your printer does not get a memo about this, but your printing habits do change. Buying a year's worth of cartridges in November feels efficient. It is often just stockpiling.

Ink has a shelf life, and spare cartridges prefer a cool, dry cupboard to a warm windowsill or a radiator-top pile of school letters. Buy for the term ahead, plus one spare if you know a project deadline is coming. Then reassess at Christmas and Easter. That keeps your money in your account and your ink out of the drying-out zone.

A simple term-time budget you can actually keep

Here is a rough framework for the rest of the 2026 school year. Count the weeks left until the summer holidays, subtract the quiet ones, and multiply by your weekly page rate. Add 10 per cent for the chaos of World Book Day, school photos and the last-week project scramble.

Split that total into mono and colour. Price both cartridge options — standard, XL and compatible — at cost per page. Then buy the smallest sensible combination that covers the next term or two. If the maths says you need roughly 600 mono pages before Easter, an XL black and a standard colour cartridge is a more useful purchase than three random multipacks.

Make the printer do less work for the same homework

A few defaults will protect the budget without changing your life. Set duplex printing where your printer supports it, so two-sided pages become normal. Use draft mode for school admin and internal notes. Print colour only when the job earns it. And if a child asks for a project cover in photo quality, check whether a normal colour print on decent paper will do the job just as well.

Review at Christmas, not in a panic

A school-year ink budget is not a spreadsheet you worship. It is a rough map. Review it at the end of the autumn term, when you have real numbers rather than guesses. You will probably find that mono pages dominate, colour pages cluster around a few events, and the summer holidays are a genuine pause.

Buy for the term, not the whole year. Keep a spare black cartridge if your household runs hot on homework. And next time the cartridge light flashes, you will know whether it is a genuine emergency or just November doing its usual thing.