# If you set a printer to print white text, does it use ink?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-you-set-a-printer-to-print-white-text-does-it-use-ink/589181>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [July 15, 2011, 9:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-you-set-a-printer-to-print-white-text-does-it-use-ink/589181 "2011-07-15T21:54:10Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![YogSothoth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/8edcca/32.png) [@YogSothoth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/YogSothoth)\
**Post date:** [July 15, 2011, 9:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-you-set-a-printer-to-print-white-text-does-it-use-ink/589181/1 "2011-07-15T21:54:10Z")

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Originally, I was going to add “…on white paper”, but other than size, I don’t think your common desktop printers can recognize paper color

And how would a printer cartridge printer white text when it has black, magenta, cyan, and yellow ink?

To be clear, I’m not saying that you draw a black box in MS Paint or something with white text. Clearly, the printer would just print the box and omit the ink that makes up the text. But I don’t have any non-white paper with me at the moment so I cannot test if a printer can actually print out white-colored text on colored paper

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**Author:** ![GaryM](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/garym/32/241_2.png) [@GaryM](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GaryM)\
**Post date:** [July 15, 2011, 10:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-you-set-a-printer-to-print-white-text-does-it-use-ink/589181/2 "2011-07-15T22:08:43Z")

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Common inkjet or laser printers would, as you say, just print it as “negative space”.

Commercial print shops, offset or silk screen for example, would use white ink.

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**Author:** ![goldmund](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a4c791/32.png) [@goldmund](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/goldmund)\
**Post date:** [July 15, 2011, 10:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-you-set-a-printer-to-print-white-text-does-it-use-ink/589181/3 "2011-07-15T22:11:36Z")

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A standard inkjet printer can’t print in white. The inks are dyes and are not opaque. There are specialty [printers](http://www.epson.com/cgi-bin/Store/jsp/Pro/SeriesStylusProWT7900/Overview.do?BV_UseBVCookie=yes) that can do it, but AFAIK nobody makes a white ink cartridge for a standard inkjet.

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**Author:** ![Lobohan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lobohan/32/79_2.png) [@Lobohan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lobohan)\
**Post date:** [July 15, 2011, 10:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-you-set-a-printer-to-print-white-text-does-it-use-ink/589181/4 "2011-07-15T22:25:05Z")

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Yeah, white is generally the color of the paper. If you want actual white printing on a colored piece of stock you need to run it as a spot color, which adds cost.

At the printshop where I used to be the design manager we had a small two color press on site and would run spot color jobs as needed, and we once ran a two color white and silver design on black cardstock. It looked okay, but the only reason we did it was to use that particular paper.