Letterhead Disappears When You Print? It’s Not Your Printer
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The letterhead is right there on screen — and missing from the printed page. It’s almost never the printer. Rule out one common false alarm, then look at where the artwork lives in the file — that’s what decides whether it makes it onto paper.
The false alarm: faded on screen, fine on paper
If the letterhead shows up washed out while you type, nothing is wrong. Word dims header artwork on screen to show it’s inactive while you edit the body — a display effect, nothing more. Microsoft’s own support forum puts it plainly: "The header and footer will print in full color." One test page settles it.
Why your letterhead actually isn’t printing
Word only prints what it treats as page content, and that depends on where the artwork sits. A page-background letterhead is screen-only until a buried print option says otherwise, and a floating image can drop out of print when a display setting gets switched off. Either way, the design is living in a layer Word doesn’t reliably send to the printer — and hunting down the setting only patches the symptom.
| Where the artwork lives | Prints by default | Repeats on every page |
|---|---|---|
| Page background | No — blocked by a buried print option | Yes |
| Floating image in the body | Usually — one setting can silently turn it off | No |
| Locked header image | Yes | Yes |
One thing no checkbox fixes: desktop printers can’t lay ink at the very edge of the sheet, so a full-bleed design always loses a thin strip at the paper’s edge on a home or office printer. (For how all four letterhead methods behave beyond printing, see every method compared.)
The letterhead that always prints
WordLetterhead builds the file the way that prints by default: your artwork embedded as a locked header image at 300 DPI — normal page content, repeated on every page. Bring a PDF, PNG, or JPG; get back a Word file in Letter, A4, Legal, or a custom size.
- Upload your letterhead design.
- Set the typing area — it becomes the Word margins.
- Download the .docx, open it in Word, and print a test page.
The preview is free and watermarked — print that test page before you pay. $9 one time, no account.
Common questions
- Why does Word fade my letterhead while I type?
- The header is inactive while you type in the body, and Word dims it on screen to signal that. It’s a display effect only — the printed page comes out at full strength.
- Why is the design cut off at the edges of the page?
- Home and office printers can’t lay ink at the very edge of the sheet, so full-bleed artwork loses a thin strip at the borders. That’s the printer’s hardware margin, not Word — no setting changes it.
- Will the free preview print the same as the paid file?
- Yes — the preview is a working .docx with a watermark over the artwork. Open it in Word and print a test page on your own printer; the $9 clean file is built the same way, minus the watermark.
- Could the printer itself still be the problem?
- Worth ruling out: draft and toner-save modes on some drivers lighten or skip graphics. Set print quality back to normal in the print dialog and run one more test page before blaming Word.