Printer Printing Lines, Streaks, Faded or Smudged? 9 Print Quality Fixes (Inkjet and Laser)

Poor print quality almost always maps to one cause per symptom: horizontal lines and banding on an inkjet are clogged nozzles; faded prints are economy modes, low toner or a clogged pigment black; vertical lines on a laser are the drum or corona wire; smudges are wrong paper settings or a dirty interior; and wrong colours are an empty or clogged colour or a media mismatch. Find your symptom below and follow the fix. The steps cover HP, Canon, Epson and Brother inkjet and laser printers, with the menu paths.

Quick fixes first

1. Print a nozzle check (inkjet) or a print quality test page (laser) from the maintenance menu; it tells you which colour or part is at fault.
2. Turn off Draft, Eco, Quiet and Toner Save modes and set quality to Normal or Best.
3. Set the paper type in the driver to match the paper in the tray.
4. Inkjet: run one head cleaning, wait 15 minutes, nozzle check again. Laser: remove the toner, rock it, refit.
5. Copies and scans only? Wipe the scanner glass and the narrow ADF strip.

Why print quality goes wrong

Inkjets put ink on paper through hundreds of nozzles per colour; any nozzle that dries produces a missing line in every pass, which shows as a regular horizontal gap. The printhead also has to be aligned with the paper feed so each pass lines up; a misalignment shows as jagged vertical edges. Lasers draw the image on a photosensitive drum, charge it with a corona wire, develop it with toner and fuse it with heat; a scratched drum, a dirty wire or a tired fuser each leaves its own signature on the page. Paper type matters for both because the driver adjusts ink volume, drying time and fuser temperature to the media you tell it you are using.

Symptom-to-cause table

Fix 1: Printer printing horizontal lines or banding (inkjet)

Run the nozzle check: HP Settings › Tools › Print Quality Report (or the HP app › Print Quality Tools); Canon Setup › Maintenance › Nozzle Check; Epson Settings › Maintenance › Print Head Nozzle Check; Brother Ink › Print Quality Check. Gaps in a colour's pattern confirm a clog. Run one cleaning for that colour, wait 15 to 20 minutes, and check again. If it improves, a second cycle is reasonable; if it is unchanged, more cycles waste ink and you need a soak or, on tank models, a single Power Cleaning. Our printer not printing black guide has the soak procedure for each head type. If the nozzle check is perfect but prints still band, the paper type is wrong or the head needs aligning (Fix 3).

Fix 2: Printer printing faded text

• Driver settings. Windows 11: Settings › Bluetooth & devices › Printers & scanners › printer › Printing preferences; set Quality to Normal, turn off EconoMode or Toner Save, Draft and "Save ink". macOS: open the print dialog's Printer Options pane and do the same, then save a preset.
• Inkjet: a faint black with clean colours is a partially clogged pigment black; follow Fix 1. Check that the paper type is Plain, not Photo or Matte, which changes how the driver uses the pigment black.
• Laser: remove the toner, rock it side to side five or six times, refit. If fading returns within a few dozen pages, replace the toner. Uniformly pale pages with a full toner usually mean the drum is worn (Brother DR units are separate; HP and Canon drums are in the cartridge). See faded print quality.
• Paper. Damp paper absorbs toner poorly and ink unevenly. Try a fresh ream.

Fix 3: Vertical lines and jagged edges (inkjet)

Run Print Head Alignment: HP Tools › Align Printhead; Canon Maintenance › Print Head Alignment; Epson Maintenance › Print Head Alignment; Brother Ink › Alignment. If a thin vertical line or a band of misregistered dots persists, the encoder strip, the clear plastic ribbon with fine black marks running behind the carriage, is dirty with ink mist. Power off, open the cover, and wipe the strip gently with a lint-free cloth dampened with water, being careful not to stretch it. A vertical smear in the same place every page is ink on the carriage rail or a roller; wipe those too.

Fix 4: Laser printer printing lines or streaks

• Vertical white line or band: corona wire. On Brother printers open the front cover, remove the drum and toner, and slide the green tab on the drum unit fully left and right several times, then return it to its home mark. On HP and Canon the wire is inside the cartridge; replacing the cartridge fixes it.
• Vertical black line: scratched drum or a dirty fuser. Inspect the drum surface for a mark; if present, replace the drum. See Brother drum end of life.
• Repeating marks down the page every 75 to 95 mm: drum damage or a spot of toner stuck to it. Every 50 to 60 mm: charge or transfer roller. Clean with a dry lint-free cloth or replace the part.
• Toner streaks that smear when rubbed: the fuser is not reaching temperature or is worn. Make sure the paper type is not set to a light stock for heavy paper, and if the smear persists on plain paper the fuser needs replacing, which on a budget laser is uneconomic.
• Grey background: drum end of life, toner save off, or a third-party toner with the wrong charge. Try a genuine cartridge to confirm.

Fix 5: Smudges, smears and wet prints

Set the correct paper type: photo paper on the Plain setting gets too much ink and smears; plain paper on a Photo setting gets too much and dries slowly. Let photos sit a minute before stacking. On inkjets, a smear on the leading edge or repeated across pages means ink on the output rollers or the head's surround; run the printer's roller cleaning if it has one (Epson Paper Guide Cleaning, Canon Bottom Plate Cleaning) or wipe the rollers. On lasers, a smear that rubs off is toner not fused (see above); a smear that is fixed is loose toner inside the printer, which a careful clean of the cartridge area fixes.

Fix 6: Wrong colours

Print the nozzle check or colour test page and confirm every colour is present. An empty or clogged cyan turns blues purple; a missing yellow turns greens blue. Replace or clean the missing colour. Then check the driver is not set to Grayscale, that ICC or colour management is set to the printer (not "application managed" in Photoshop at the same time), and that the paper type matches. Lasers have a Calibrate or Color Registration routine in their maintenance menu; run it after changing toner. Our wrong colours printing guide goes deeper.

Fix 7: Lines on copies and scans but not on prints

Print a page from the computer. If it is clean and only copies or ADF scans have a line, the scanner is dirty. Lift the lid and wipe the main glass and, crucially, the narrow strip of glass to the left or right of it that the ADF uses, plus the white backing on the underside of the lid. A single speck on that strip draws a line down every page fed through the ADF.

Brand-specific tools

HP: the HP app Print Quality Tools run cleaning, alignment and the quality report; HP Print and Scan Doctor on Windows adds the same with diagnostics. Canon: the driver's Maintenance tab on Windows exposes Nozzle Check, Cleaning, Deep Cleaning, Bottom Plate Cleaning and Roller Cleaning; System Cleaning exists on MegaTank models. Epson: Epson Printer Utility on Mac and the driver's Maintenance tab on Windows; Power Cleaning on EcoTank. Brother: Ink menu on inkjets; on lasers, the drum's green tab and the Drum Dot Print test (which marks the position of a spot on the drum so you can clean it).

If nothing worked

When a soaked inkjet printhead still shows gaps in the nozzle check, the head has failed; on Canon PIXMA and HP OfficeJet Pro models the head is replaceable for $40 to $90, on Epson, Brother and HP cartridge-head models it is effectively a new printer or a new cartridge. On a laser, a drum and toner replacement fixes nearly every line and fade problem; a fuser or laser scanner fault is not worth repairing on a printer under a few hundred dollars. If you would like someone to read your nozzle check or test page and tell you which part is at fault before you spend on consumables, you can get help from a printer specialist.