How to Print Letterhead

A letterhead that looks perfect on screen can still print flat, blurry or inconsistent if the file and paper specification aren't set up for print in the first place. Screen design and print production are genuinely different disciplines with different units, different colour systems and different failure modes — this guide covers what actually matters at each stage, from paper weight through to what to expect to pay.

Paper weight (GSM)

GSM (grams per square metre) measures paper weight, and it's the single biggest factor in how a letterhead physically feels in someone's hand — heavier stock reads as more considered before a single word is read.

Colour mode: RGB vs CMYK

Screens display colour by mixing red, green and blue light (RGB); commercial printers build colour by layering cyan, magenta, yellow and black ink (CMYK). The two systems don't cover an identical range of colour, and converting from one to the other can shift certain shades — bright blues, purples and saturated oranges are the most common casualties, typically appearing slightly duller once printed than they looked on screen. If you're sending a file to a print shop, ask whether they want a CMYK-converted file already, or whether they'll handle the RGB-to-CMYK conversion themselves during prepress — most professional printers do this as standard and will often get a more accurate result than a manual conversion done without a colour-calibrated monitor.

Bleed and safe zones

If any part of your letterhead touches the very edge of the page — a full-width colour bar, for example — a print shop will usually ask for bleed: extra artwork extending past the trim line, so there's no thin white sliver at the edge after cutting, which can happen because commercial cutting is accurate but not perfectly so.

Most letterhead designs keep every element within the printable margin and never touch the page edge, which means they don't need bleed at all — it only becomes relevant if your border or background colour is designed to run edge-to-edge. If in doubt, ask your print shop directly; specifying 3mm of bleed when it isn't needed costs nothing, while forgetting it when it is needed can mean a reprint.

Resolution

Export at 300 DPI or higher for anything going to a commercial printer. The PDF export in Letterheads renders at 2× the on-screen resolution specifically so logos and fine divider lines stay sharp once printed, rather than just looking sharp on a screen where the difference between 96 DPI and 300 DPI is invisible anyway.

Choosing a print shop and what to ask for

• Confirm paper weight (GSM) and finish they offer for letterhead stock specifically, not just general business cards.
• Ask whether they want an RGB or CMYK file, and in what format (PDF is almost universally accepted).
• Ask about their minimum order quantity — many commercial printers have volume minimums that make small runs disproportionately expensive.
• Ask for a physical proof before a full print run if you're ordering more than a small batch, especially for colour-critical brand work.
• Ask about turnaround time separately from cost — rush printing often carries a real premium.

Printing at home, in-office, or at a print shop

Digital vs offset printing

Digital printing (the method behind most quick-turnaround print shops and all home/office printers) applies toner or ink directly, with no setup cost beyond the print job itself — ideal for smaller runs and any job where you might revise the design again soon. Offset printing transfers ink via a printing plate and delivers extremely consistent colour across very large runs, but the plate setup cost only pays off at real volume, typically upward of a thousand sheets. For most individuals and small businesses ordering a few hundred letterheads at a time, digital printing is both cheaper and more practical.

Paper finish options

• Matte or uncoated — the most common choice for letterhead; takes pen ink well for signatures and doesn't glare under office lighting.
• Gloss or satin coated — makes colours and logos look punchier, but pen ink can smudge before it dries, which matters if the letterhead will be hand-signed.
• Textured (linen, laid, cotton) — a subtle surface texture that reads as premium and traditional, popular for law firms and executive correspondence.
• Recycled — increasingly common and often indistinguishable from virgin stock in quality, worth requesting explicitly if sustainability matters to your brand.

What letterhead printing typically costs

Costs vary significantly by region, quantity and paper choice, so treat the following as rough, directional ranges rather than a quote. A small run (50–100 sheets) of digitally printed, 100 GSM letterhead through a local print shop is typically a modest one-off cost per project. Prices generally scale down per sheet as quantity increases — a run of 500 sheets often costs meaningfully less per sheet than a run of 50, even though the total is higher. Home or office printing has effectively no marginal setup cost, only the ongoing cost of ink or toner and the paper stock itself, which makes it the cheapest option for genuinely small, irregular print needs.

Common printing mistakes and how to avoid them

• Sending a screen-resolution file to a professional printer — always export at 300 DPI or higher, or use a vector PDF/SVG where possible.
• Not checking whether the printer needs CMYK — a file left in RGB can print with visibly shifted colours if the printer doesn't convert it correctly.
• Skipping a physical proof on a large or colour-critical run — a proof catches problems a screen never will, including how a specific paper stock absorbs ink.
• Choosing a glossy finish for a document that will be hand-signed with a ballpoint pen, then finding the ink smudges.
• Assuming home-printer colour matches a professional print shop's output — the two rarely look identical, so don't treat a home-printed proof as final.
• Forgetting to specify bleed when a design element does run to the page edge, resulting in a thin unintended white border after trimming.

A pre-print checklist

• Exported at 300 DPI or as a vector PDF/SVG, not a screen-resolution image.
• Colours checked against CMYK expectations if the print shop requires it — ask rather than assume.
• Bleed added only if a design element genuinely touches the page edge.
• Paper weight and finish chosen with how the letterhead will be used in mind — hand-signed documents want matte, not gloss.
• A physical proof requested for any run large enough, or important enough, that a colour mismatch would actually matter.

None of this needs to be intimidating — most letterhead designs are simple enough that any competent print shop can produce them correctly from a well-exported PDF with almost no back-and-forth. The specification questions above exist mainly to catch the small number of designs where an edge-to-edge colour bar, an unusually saturated accent colour, or a hand-signature requirement changes what "correct" actually means for that particular letterhead.