Staples Letterhead Printing Review

Letterhead at Staples is an easy process, and tends to turn out quite well. There is both an in-house and out sourced variety, and both are good for your needs.

With the in-house variety, Staples never says they can print them with their machines, but really all you have to do is design your letterhead to 8.5x11" size (common sized) and they print it on their normal paper. For about 100 or less letterhead that you need quickly, this is actually rather good and cheap. For B&W, it will cost you about $0.09 for each, and color at $0.49 each. They can be used in any printer after that with safety (so you won't have to worry about the paper not printing) and you can expect quality from their service.

If you create it yourself for in-store production, you don't have to worry about any color restrictions. As where their out sourced service does not have full color capabilities (at the time of this article at least).

If you are expecting bleeds though (where the ink is all the way at the edge of the paper, without a border) than the in-house variety won't reach your expectations. While the team can cut the paper down, it won't be correct sizing, and the cutter is normally not well aligned. Meaning the bottom pages drag and will be smaller than the top ones.

As for the out of house variety, like most other products it takes 7-10 business days, or two weeks. They also can only print in 1 or 2 color, or standard ink colors (black, red, green, etc), and of course it is all flat printing. The reason for this is, while raised lettering feels good, it wouldn't be effective for letterhead that needs to be printed on.

They also offer different paper types. You can get a normal printing paper, as well as most resume papers (laid, linen, recycled), and in some different colors like ivory or blue.

Also, like most other products, you can print text and one graphic. However, there is a design your own function, where you can print a picture in the center of the page (usually it is best if you fade the center graphic out so you can see the words printed over it when you us the letterhead).

Quality is good, and from my experience I have never encountered any problem with letterhead printing. You can also order blank sheets for an extra fee, but normally it isn't worth it. It would be better, and cheaper, just to buy the same paper from the aisle than wait two weeks to get more expensive paper (while being just the same as what Staples offers in their aisle).

So letterhead printing is good at Staples, but their full color capacity is lacking.