How to Print a Monthly Calendar Cleanly
Last reviewed on May 4, 2026
The monthly calendars on this site are designed to print on one sheet of paper without any tweaking. In practice, browsers and printers occasionally have other ideas. This page walks through the settings that produce a clean print every time, the most common things that go wrong, and how to fix them.
The fastest path
- Open the month you want to print — for example, May 2026.
- Click the Print Calendar button at the top of the calendar grid (or press Ctrl+P / Cmd+P).
- In the print dialog, leave most settings at their defaults. The only one to verify is paper size: letter for the US and Canada, A4 for most of the rest of the world.
- Click Print.
The site's print stylesheet hides the navigation, footer, and ads, scales the calendar grid to the printable area, and uses high-contrast text. You should not need to "Fit to page" or change margins.
Recommended settings by browser
Chrome / Edge / Brave
- Destination: your printer (or "Save as PDF" if you want a digital copy).
- Pages: All.
- Layout: Portrait.
- Paper size: Letter or A4 depending on where you live.
- Margins: Default.
- Scale: Default.
- "Background graphics": on. This is the setting that keeps the weekend shading and holiday highlights visible. By default it's off, which produces a flatter-looking print.
Safari
- Open File → Print.
- Click "Show Details" if the dialog is collapsed.
- Check "Print backgrounds" so weekend shading shows.
- Choose Letter or A4 paper size, default margins.
Firefox
- Open the print dialog with Ctrl+P / Cmd+P.
- Click "More settings" and turn on "Print backgrounds."
- Set Scale to 100%; if the calendar overflows by a single line, drop to 95%.
Letter vs A4: does it matter?
Letter (8.5 × 11 inches) is slightly wider and shorter than A4 (8.27 × 11.69 inches). The site's print stylesheet works on both. If you set the wrong paper size in the dialog, the print may have wider margins on one edge or get clipped on the opposite edge. The fix is in the dialog, not in the page — pick the size that matches the paper actually loaded in your printer.
Portrait or landscape?
Portrait works well when you want a slim profile to pin on a fridge or notice board. Landscape gives each weekday cell more horizontal room and is the better choice if you plan to write notes in the cells. The default print is portrait. To switch, change the orientation in the print dialog before clicking Print.
Saving ink and toner
- Choose your printer's "Draft" or "Economy" mode if it has one. The contrast on the calendar is high enough that draft prints are still legible.
- Print in grayscale unless you specifically want the holiday highlights in colour. Greyscale cuts ink use by about half on a typical inkjet.
- Print two months on one sheet. In the print dialog, look for "Pages per sheet" or "Multiple" and set it to 2. The text will be smaller but still readable.
- Print on the back of single-sided paper from the recycling bin. The site's print layout doesn't depend on a clean reverse side.
What to do if the calendar prints on two pages
The most common cause is the print scale being set above 100%. Open the print dialog, check the preview, and if the calendar is being clipped at the bottom, lower the scale to 95% or 90%. Try "Fit to page" only as a last resort — some printers shrink so aggressively that the day numbers become hard to read.
Other things that push the layout onto a second page:
- Browser zoom set above 100% in the page itself. Reset zoom to 100% with Ctrl+0 / Cmd+0 and try again.
- An adblocker that injects extra elements after the page loads. Try printing in a private / incognito window.
- A printer driver with "Headers and footers" enabled. Turn those off in the print dialog.
Printing several months at once
If you want to print, say, the full 2026 calendar:
- Open the 2026 overview page.
- Use middle-click (or Ctrl+click / Cmd+click) on each month link to open all twelve in background tabs.
- Print each tab. Some browsers also let you select multiple tabs and print them together.
Or print the 2026 quarterly views, which fit three months on each sheet — you'll get the whole year on four pages instead of twelve.
Saving as a PDF
Every modern operating system can "print to PDF" without any extra software. Choose "Save as PDF" (Chrome / Edge / Firefox) or "Save as PDF" from the PDF menu in the lower-left corner of the Safari print dialog. The result is a fixed-layout file you can email, share, or print later from a different machine.
Quick checklist
- Pick the right paper size for what's loaded in the printer.
- Turn on "Background graphics" so weekends and holidays show.
- Leave scale at 100% and margins at default.
- Use draft mode and grayscale when ink matters.
- If it spills onto two pages, drop the scale to 95% before reaching for "Fit to page."
Related
- 2026 monthly calendars — pick a month to print.
- Quarterly 2026 calendars — three months on a sheet.
- 2026 US federal holidays — confirm which days are highlighted.