Print styles

People do still print

Not whole websites, but specific pages. Directions taken to a car, opening hours pinned in an office, a quote passed to somebody else, a checklist carried to a job where there is no signal.

It also covers saving as a document, which uses the same styling. Somebody attaching your quote to an email is producing a printed page whether or not paper is involved.

So this is a small feature for a small group, and the group is made of people doing something deliberate with your content, which makes them worth the modest effort.

What breaks by default

Navigation and footers print as long lists of words. Dark backgrounds either print as a solid block of ink or are dropped, leaving light text invisible on white.

Links print as their text alone, so a page full of see our guide gives a reader no way to reach anything. Images sized for a screen overflow the page width.

And anything that only appears after interaction is simply absent, which is how a printed page ends up missing the section somebody wanted.

What a print style should do

The list below is a complete print style for a business site. It is a short block of styling and it is the kind of detail that makes a site feel considered.

Applied site-wide, it covers every page at once rather than needing attention per page. That is why the work is worth doing even though only a handful of your pages will ever reach a printer.

• Hide navigation, footers, banners and forms
• Black text on white, whatever the screen uses
• Expand link addresses so they are readable on paper
• Fit images within the page width
• Avoid breaking a heading from its text
• Show anything hidden behind an interaction
• Keep the business name and contact details on the page

Keep the identity on the paper

A printed page separated from the browser loses every clue about where it came from. Your business name, phone number and the page address should be on the paper somewhere.

That matters most for quotes and directions, which are the pages most likely to be handed to somebody else or found weeks later on a desk.

It costs one line at the foot and turns an anonymous sheet into something traceable back to you, which is the entire point of somebody printing it.

Which pages are worth it

Directions and location pages, opening hours, anything with a price, checklists, and any how-to somebody might follow away from a screen. Those cover nearly every real print.

A homepage or a services overview is rarely printed and rarely worth special attention. A print style applied site-wide handles those adequately without any per-page work.

Our page on maps and directions covers the case where this matters most, since a map embed prints as nothing at all.

For those pages, print a written address and a short set of directions alongside the map. That text is genuinely useful on a screen as well, and it is the only part that survives onto paper.

Test it honestly

Use your browser's print preview on the pages people actually print. It takes a minute per page and the faults are immediately obvious rather than subtle.

Check the second page as well as the first. Headings stranded at the foot of a page and tables split across a break are the faults that only appear on longer content.

Then print one, once, on paper. Something about physical output surfaces problems that a preview does not, and you only need to do it a single time.

How much this matters

Honestly, not much, and it is cheap enough that the ratio still favours doing it. It sits with the favicon and the social preview as details that cost an hour and are noticed when missing.

It matters more for trades where somebody carries information to a job, and for any business whose customers are older or less comfortable working from a phone.

Do it once, site-wide, and never think about it again. That is the correct amount of attention for this and anything more is misplaced.